zora neale hurston
THEIR
EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
WITH A FOREWORD BY MARY HELEN WASHINGTON AND AN AFTERWORD BY HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.
PERENNIAL = CLASSICS
A hardcover edition of this book was originally published by J. B. Lippincott, Inc.
TIIEIR llYFS WfiRE WATCHING GOD. Copyright O 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. Renewed 1965 by John C. Hurston and Joel Hurston. Foreword copyright O 1990 by Mary I-Iden Washington. Afterword, Selected Bibliography, and Chronology copyright O 1990 by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. All rights reserved. Pnnted in the
United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except m the case of brief quota· nons embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., lO F..aM 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
First PERENNIAL LrnlWlY editiou published 1990.
First Perennial Classics edition published 1998 Perennial Classics are published by
Haq,erPerennial, a division ofHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data
Hurston, Zora Neale.
Their eyes were watching God : a novel/ Zora Neale Hurston ; with a foreword by Mary Helen Wamin.gton and an afterword by Henry Louis
Gares, Jr.-ht Perennial Classics ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-093141·8
Includes bibliographical references.
l. Afro-American women-psychology--Fiction. 2. Sdf-realizatiou• Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3515.U789T5 1999
813'.52-dcll 98-45543
98 990001 02 +IRRD-H 1098 76 54321
To Henry Allen Moe
Table of Contents
FOREWORD RY MARY HELEN WASHINGTON ix
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
1
AFTERWORD BY HENRY LOUIS GATFS, JR.
195
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
207
CHRONOLOGY
211
Foreword
In 1987, the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of1'heir Eyes Were Watching God, the University of Illinois Press inserted a banner in the lower right-hand corner of the cover of their anniversary reprint edition: "1987/50th Anniversary-------STILL A BESTSELLER!" TI1e back cover, using a quote from the Satur• day Review by Doris Grumbach, proclaimed Their Eyes, "the finest black novel of its time" and "one of the finest of all time." Zora Neale Hurston would have been shocked and pleased, I believe, at this stunning reversal in the reception of her second novel, which for nearly thirty years after its first publication was out of print, largely unknown and unread, and dismissed by the male literary establishment in subtle and nor so subtle ways. One white reviewer in 1937 praised the novel in the Saturday Review as a "rich and racy love story, if somewhat awkward," but had difficulty believing that such a town as Eatonville, "inhabited and governed entirely by Negroes," could be real.
Black male critics were much harsher in their assessments of the novel. From the beginning of her career, Hurston was severely criticized for not writing fiction in the protest tradition. Sterling Brown said in 1936 of her earlier book Mules and Men that it was not bitter enough, that it did not depict the harsher side ofblack life in the South, that Hurston made black southern
x • Foreword
life appear easygoing and carefree. Alain Locke, dean of black scholars and critics during the Harlem Renaissance, wrote in his yearly review of the literature for Opportunity magazine that Hurston's Their Eyes was simply out of step with the more serious trends of the times. When, he asks, will Hurston stop creating "these pseudo-primitives whom the reading public still loves to laugh with, weep over, and envy," and "come to grips with the motive fiction and social document fiction?" The most damaging critique of all came from the most well-known and influential black writer of the day, Richard Wright. Writing for the leftist magazine New Masses, Wright excoriated Their Eyes as a novel that did for literature what the minstrel shows did for theater, that is, make white folks laugh. The novel, he said, "carries no theme, no message, no thought," but exploited those "quaint" aspects of Negro life that satisfied the tastes of a white audience. By the end of the forties, a decade dominated by Wright and by the stormy fiction of social realism, the quieter voice of a woman searching for self-realization could not, or would not, be heard.
Like most of my friends and colleagues who were teaching in the newly formed Black Studies departments in the late six• ties, I can still recall quite vividly my own discovery of Their Eyes. Somewhere around 1968, in one of the many thriving black bookstores in the country-this one, Vaughn's Rook Store, was in Detroit-I came across the slender little paperback (bought for 75¢) with a stylized portrait of Janie Crawford and Jody Starks on the cover-she pumping water at the well, her long hair cascading down her hack, her head turned just slightly in his direction with a look of longing and expectancy; he, standing at a distance in his fancy silk shirt and purple suspenders, his coat over one arm, his head cocked to one side, with the look that speaks to Janie of far horizons.
What I loved immediately about this novel besides its high
Foreword • xi
poetry and its female hero was its investment in black folk tradi• tions. Here, finally, was a woman on a quest for her own identity and, unlike so many other questing figures in black literature, her journey would take her, not away from, but deeper and deeper into blackness, the descent into the Everglades with its rich black soil, wild cane, and communal life representing immersion into black traditions. But for most black women readers discovering Their Eyes for the first time, what was most compelling was the figure of Janie Crawford-powerful, articulate, self-reliant, and radically different from any woman character they had ever before encountered in literature. Andrea Rushing, then an instructor in the Afro· American Studies Department at Harvard, remembers reading Their Eyes in a women's study group with Nellie McKay, Barbara Smith, and Gail Pemberton. "I loved the language of this book," Rushing says, "but mostly I loved it because it was about a woman who wasn't pathetic, wasn't a tragic mulatto, who defied everything that was expected of her, who went off with a man without bothering to divorce the one she left and wasn't broken, crushed, and run down."
The reaction of women all across the country who found themselves so powerfully represented in a literary text was often direct and personal. Janie and Tea Cake were talked about as though they were people the readers knew intimately. Sherley Anne Williams remembers going down to a conference in Los Angeles in 1969 where the main speaker, Toni Cade Bambara, asked the women in the audience, "Are the sisters here ready for Tea Cake?" And Williams, remembering that even Tea Cake had his flaws, responded, "Are the Tea Cakes of the world ready for us?" Williams taught "lbeir Eyes for the first time at Cal Srare Presno, in a migrant farming area where the students, like the char• acters in Their Eyes, were used to making their living from the land. "For the first time," Williams says, "they saw themselves in these
xii • Foreword
characters and they saw their lives portrayed with joy." Rushing's comment on the female as hero and Williams's story about the joy• ful portrayal of a culture together epitomize what critics would later see as the novel's unique contribution to black literature: it affirms black cultural traditions while revising them to empower black women.
By 1971, Their Eyes was an underground phenomenon, sur•
facing here and there, wherever there was a growing interest in African-American studies-and a black woman literature teacher. Alice Walker was teaching the novel at Wellesley in the 1971-72 school year when she discovered that Hurston was only a footnote in the scholarship. Reading in an essay by a white folklorist that Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave, Walker decided that such a fate was an insult to Hurston and began her search for the grave to put a marker on it. In a personal essay, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," written fur Ms. magazine, Walker describes going to Florida and searching through waist-high weeds to find what she thought was Hurston's grave and laying on it a marker inscribed "Zora Neale Hurston/'A Genius of the South'/Novelist/ Folklorist/Anthropologist/1901-1960." With that inscription and that essay, Walker ushered in a new era in the scholarship on Their Eyes Were Watching God.
By 1975, 1heir Eyes, again out of print, was in such demand
that a petition was circulated at the December 1975 convention of the Modem Language Association (MI.A.) to get the novel back into print. In that same year at a conference on minority literature held at Yale and directed by Michael Cooke, the few copies of Their Eyes that were available were circulated for two hours at a time to conference participants, many of whom were reading the novel fur the first rime. In March of 1977, when the MIA Commission on
.Minority Groups and the Study of Language and Literature pub•
lished its first list of out of print books most in demand at a national
Foreword • xiii
level, the program coordinator, Dexter Fisher, wrote: "Their Eyes
Were Watching God is unanimously at the top of the list."
Between 1977 and 1979 the Zora Neale Hurston renais• sance was in full bloom. Robert Hemcnway's biography, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, published in 1977, was a runaway bestseller at the December 1977 MIA convention. The new University of Illinois Press edition of Their Eyes, pub• lished a year after the Hemenway biography in March of 1978, made the novel available on a steady and dependable basis for the next ten years. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing ... And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A 7,0ra Neale Hurston Reader, edited by Alice Walk.er, was published by the Feminist Press in 1979. Probably more than anything else, these three literary events made it possible for serious Hurston scholarship to emerge.
But the event that for me truly marked the beginning of the third wave of critical attention to Their Eyes took place in December
1979 at the MIA convention in San Francisco in a session aptly titled "Traditions and Their Transformations in Afro-American Letters," chaired hy Robert Stepto of Yale with John Callahan of Lewis and Clark College and myself (then at the University of Detroit) as the two panelists. Despite the fact that the session was scheduled on Sunday morning, the last session of the entire con• vention, the room was packed and the audience unusually attentive, In his comments at the end of the session, Stepro raised the issue that has become one ofthe most highly controversial and hotly con• tested aspects of the novel: whether or not Janie is able to achieve her voice in Their Eyes. 'What concerned Stepto wes the courtroom scene in which Jani.e is called on not only to preserve her own life and liberty but also to make the jury, as well as all of us who hear her tale, understand the meaning of her life with Tea Cake. Stepto found Janie curiously silent in this scene, with Hurston telling the
xiv • Foreword
story in omniscient third person so that we do not hear Janie speak-at least not in her own first-person voice. Stcpto was quite convinced (and convincing) that the frame story in which Janie speaks to Pheoby creates only the illusion that Janie has found her voice, that Hursron's insistence on telling Janie's story in the third person undercuts her power as speaker. While the rest of us in the room struggled to find our voices, Alice Walker rose and claimed hers, insisting passionately that women did not have to speak when men thought they should, that they would choose when and where they wish to speak because while many women had found their own voices, they also knew when it was better not to use it. What was most remarkable about the energetic and at times heated discussion that followed Stepto's and Walker's remarks was the assumption of everyone in that room that Their Eyeswa.'i a shared text, that a novel that just ten years earlier was unknown and unavailable had entered into critical acceptance a.'> perhaps the most widely known and the most privileged text in the African-American literary canon.
That MIA session was important for another reason. Walker's
defense ofTanie's choice (actually Hurston's choice) to be silent in the crucial places in the novel turned out to be the earliest feminist reading of voice in Their Eyes, a reading that was later supported by many other Hurston scholars. In a recent essay on Their hJes, and the question ofvoice, Michael Awkward argues that Janie's voice at the end of the novel is a communal one, that when she tells Pheoby to tell her story ("You can tell 'em what Ah say ifyou wants to. Dar's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mour") she is choosing a collective rather than an individual voice, demonstrat• ing her closeness to the collective spirit ofthe Afiican-American oral tradition. Thad Davis agrees with this reading of voice, adding that while Janie is the teller of the tale, Pheoby is the bearer of the tale. Davis says that Janie's experimental life may not allow her to effect changes beyond what she causes in Pheoby's life; hut Pheoby,
Foreword • xv
standing within the traditional role of women, is the one most suited to take the message back to the conununity.
Although, like Stepto, I too am uncomfortable with the
absence ofJanie's voice in the courtroom scene, I think that silence reflects Hurston's discomfort with the model of the male hero who asserts himself through his powerful voice. When Hurston chose a female hero for the story she faced an interesting dilemma: the female presence was inherently a critique of the male-dominated folk culture and therefore could not be its heroic representative. When Janie says at the end of her story that "talkin' don't amount to much" if it's divorced from experience, she is testifying to the limitations of voice and critiquing the culture that celebrates orality to the exclusion of inner growth. Her final speech to Phcoby at the end of Their Eyes actually casts doubt on the relevance of oral speech and supports Alice Walker's claim that women's silence can be intentional and useful:
'Course, talk.in' don't amount ruh uh hill uh beans when yuh can't do nothin' else ... Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo papa and yo mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.
The language of the men in Their Eyes is almost always divorced from any kind ofinteriority, and the men are rarely shown in the process of growth. Their talking is either a game or a method of exerting power. Janie's life is about the experience of relationships, and whiJe Jody and Tea Cake and all the other talk· ing men are essentially static characters, Janie and Pheoby pay closer attention to their own inner life-to experience-because it is the site for growth.
xvi • Foreword
If there is anything the outpouring of scholarship on Their Eyes teaches us, it is that this is a rich and complicated text and that each generation of readers will bring something new to our under• standing of it. If we were protective of this text and unwilling to subject it to literary analysis during the first years ofits rebirth, that was because it was a beloved text fur those of us who discovered in it something of our own experiences, our own language, our own history. In 1989, I find myself asking new questions abour Their Eyes----questions about Hurston's ambivalence toward her female protagonist, about its uncritical depiction of violence toward women, about the ways in which Janie's voice is dominated by men even in passages that are about her own inner growth, In Their Eyes, Hurston has not given us an unambiguously heroic female character. She puts Janie on the track of autonomy, self• realization, and independence, but she also places Janie in the posi• tion ofromanric heroine as the object of Tea Cake's quest, at times so subordinate to the magnificent presence of Tea Cake that even her interior life reveals more about him than about her. What Their Eyes shows us is a woman writer struggling with the problem of the questing hero as woman and the difficulties in 1937 of giving a woman character such power and such daring.
Because Their Eyes has been in print continuously since 1978,
it has become available each year to thousands of new readers, It is taught in colleges all over the country, and its availability and pop• ularity have generated two decades of the highest level of scholar• ship. But I want to remember the history that nurtured this text into rebirth, especially the collective spirit of the sixties and seven• ties that galvanized us into political action to retrieve the lost works of black women writers. There is a lovely symmetry between text and context in the case of 1heir Eyes: as Their Eyes affirms and cel• ebrates black culture it reflects that same affirmation of black cul• ture that rekindled interest in the text; Janie telling her story to a
Foreword • xvii
listening woman friend, Pheoby, suggests to me all those women readers who discovered their own tale in Janie's story and passed it on from one to another; and certainly, as the novel represents a woman redefining and revising a male-dominated canon, these readers have, like Janie, made their voices heard in the world of let• ters, revising the canon while asserting their proper place in it,
MARY HELEN WASHINGTON
•1
Ships at a distance have every man)s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
Now, women forget all those thlngs they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back
from burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the pillow and the feet. She had come back fium the sodden and the bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.
The people a.II saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.
2 • Zora Neale Hurston
Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song.
"What she hung on. Dis love! Dar's just whur's got us uh pullin' and uh haulin' and sweatin' and doin' from can't see in de mornin' till can't see at night. Dar's how come de ole folks say dat bein' uh fool don't kill nobody. It jus' makes you sweat. Ah betcha you wants some dressed up dude dat got to look at de sole of his shoe everytime he cross de street tuh see whether he got enough leather dere tuh make it across. You can buy and sell such as dem wid what you got. In facr you can buy 'cm and give 'em away."
"Ah ain't studyin' 'bout none of'em. At de same time Ah ain't takin' dat ole land tuh heart neither. Ah could throw ten acres ofit
24 • Zora Neale Hurston
over de fence everyday and never look back to see where it fell. Ah feel de same way 'bout Mr, Killicks too. Some folks never was meant to be loved and he's one of 'em."
"How cornet"
"'Cause Ah hates de way his head is so long one way and so flat on de sides and dat pone uh fat hack uh his neck."
"He never made lus own head, You talk so silly"
"Ah don't keer who made it, Ah don't like de job. His belly is too big too, now, and his toe-nails look lak mule foots. And
'tain't nothin' in de way of him washin' his feet every evenin'
before he comes tuh bed, 'Tain't nothin' tuh hinder him 'cause Ah places de water for him Ah'd ruthcr be shot wid tacks than tuh turn over in de bed and stir up de air whilst he is in dere. He don't even never mention nothin' pretty."
She began to cry
"Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think Ah , "
"'Tain'tnouse in you cryin', Janie, Grandma done been long uh
few roads herself. But folks is meant to cry 'bout somethin' or other, Better leave things de way dcy is, Youse young yet, No rellin' whut monr happen befo' you die, Wait awhile, baby: Yo' mind will change," Nar_my sent Janie along with a stern mien, but she dwindled all
the rest of the day as she worked, And when she gained the privacy of her own little shack she stayed on her knees so long she forgot she was there herself. There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight Then there is a depth of thought untouched hy words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched hy thought, Nanny entered this infinity of conscious pain again on her old knees, Towards morning she muttered, "Lawd, you know mah heart, Ah done de best Ah could do, De rest is left to you," She scuffled up from her knees and fell heavily across the bed. A month later she was dead,
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 25
So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, "Ah hope you fall on soft ground;' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was won• dcrful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.
•4
Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking in rhymes to her. He had ceased to won• der at her long black hair and finger it. Six months back he had told her, "ff Ah kin haul de wood heah and chop it fuh yuh, look Iak you oughta be able tuh tote it inside. Mah fust wife never bothered me 'bout choppin' no wood nohow. She'd grab dat ax and sling chips lak uh man. You done been spoilt rotten."
So Janie had told him, "Ah'm just as stiff as you is stout. If you can stand not to chop and tote wood Ah reckon you can stand not to git no dinner. 'Scuse mah freezolity, Misr' Killicks, bur Ah don't mean to chop de first chip."
"Aw you know Ah'm gwine chop de wood fuh yuh. Even ifyou
is stingy as you can be wid me. Yo' Grandma and me myself done spoilt yuh now, and Ah reckon Ah have tuh keep on wid it."
One morning soon he called her out of the kitchen to the
barn. He had the mule all saddled at the gate.
"Looka heah, LilBit, help me out some. Cut up desc seed taters fuh me. Ah got tub go step off a piece."
"Where you goin'?"
"Over tuh Lake Citytuh see uh man about uh mule,"
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 27
"Whut you need two mules fuh? Lessen you aims to swap off dis one."
=Naw, Ah needs two mules dis yeah. Taters is goin' tuh be taters in de full. Bringin' big prices. Ah aims tuh run two plows, and dis man Ah'm talkin' 'bout is got uh mule all gentled up so even uh woman kin handle 'im."
Logan held his wad of tobacco real still in his jaw like a ther•
mometer of his feelings while he studied Janie's face and waited for her to say something.
"So Ah thought Ah mout as well go see." He tagged on and swallowed to kill time but Janie said nothing except, "Ah'll cut de p'raters fuh yuh. When yuh comin' back?"
"Don't know exactly. Round dust dark Ah reckon. It's uh
sorta long trip-specially if Ah hafter lead one on de way back." When Janie had finished indoors she sat down in the barn with
the potatoes. But springtime reached her in there so she moved everything to a place in the yard where she could see the road. The noon sun filtered through the leaves of the fine oak tree where she sat and made lacy patterns on the ground. She had been there a long time when she heard whistling coming down the road.
It was a cityfied, stylish dressed man with his hat set at an angle that didn't belong in these parts. His coat was over his arm, but he didn't need it to represent his dothes. The shirt with the silk sleevebolders was dazzling enough fur the world. He whistled, mopped his face and walked like he knew where he was going. He was a seal-brown color but he acted like Mr. Washburn or some• body like that to Janie. Where would such a man be coming from and where was he going? He didn't look her way nor no other way except straight ahead, so Janie ran to the pump and jerked the han• dle hard while she pumped. It made a loud noise and also made her heavy hair fall down. So he stopped and looked hard, and then he asked her for a cool drink of water.
28 • Zorn Neale Hurston
Janie pumped it off until she got a good look at the man. He talked friendly while he drank.
Joe Stark'> was the name, yeah Joe Starks from in and through Georgy. Been workin' for white folks all his life. Saved up some money-round three hundred dollars, yes indeed, right here in his pocket. Kept hearin' 'bout them buildin' a new state down heah in Floridy and sort of wanted to come. But he was makin' money where he was. But when he heard all about 'em mak:in' a town all outa colored folks, he knowed
"Dey dead, Ah reckon. Ah wouldn't know 'bout 'em 'cause
mah Grandma raised me. She dead too."
"She dead toot Well, who's lookin' after a lil girl-chile lak you?"
"Ah'm married."
"You married? You ain't hardly old enough to be weaned. Ah
betcha you still craves sugar-tits, doncher?"
"Yeah, and Ah makes and sucks 'em when de notion strikes me. Drinks sweeten' water too."
"Ah loves dat mahself. Never specks to get too old to enjoy syrup sweeten' water when it's cools and nice."
"Us got plenty syrup in de barn. Ribbon-cane syrup. If you
so desires=-"
"Where yo' husband at, Mis' er-er."
The1t Eyes Were Watching God 411, 29
"Mah name is Janie Mae Killicks since Ah got married. Userer be name Janie Mae Crawford. Mah husband is gone tuh buy a mule fuh me tuh plow. He left me cuttin' up seed p'taters." "You behind a plow! You ain't got no mo' business wid uh plow than uh hog is got wid uh holiday! You ain't got no busi• ness cuttin' up no seed p'raters neither. A pretty doll-baby lak you is made to sit on de front porch and rock and fan yo'self and
eat p'tarers can't never expect tuh better
our choice, Ah move dat we make Brother Starks our Mayor until we kin see further."
"Second dat rnotlonll!" It was everybody talking at once, so
it was no need of putting it to a vote.
"And now we'll listen tuh uh few words uh encouragement from Mrs. Mayor Starks."
The burst of applause was cut short by Joe taking the floor
himself
"Thank yuh fuh yo' compliments, but mah wife don't know nothin' 'bout no speech-makin'. Ah never married her for nothin' lak dat. She's uh woman and her place is in de home."
Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn't
too easy. She had never thought of making a speech, and didn't know if she cared to make one at all. It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things. But anyway, she went down the road behind him that night feeling cold. He strode along invested with his new dignity, thought and planned out loud, unconscious of her thoughts.
"De mayor of uh town lak dis can't lay round home too
much. De place needs build.in' up. Janie, Ah'll git hold uh some• body ruh help out in de store and you kin look after things whilst Ah drum up things otherwise."
"Oh J town needs some light right now."
"Unh hunh, it is uh little dark right long heah."
'"'Course it is. "Iain't no use in scufflin' over all dese stumps and roots in de dark. Ah'll call uh meetin' bout de dark and de roots right away. Ah 'll sit on dis case first thing."
The very next day with money out of his own pocket he sent
off to Scars, Roebuck and Company for the street lamp and told the town to meet the following Thursday night to vote on it. Nobody had ever thought of street lamps and some of them said it was a useless notion. They went so far as to vote against it, but the majority ruled.
But the whole town got vain over it after it came. That was
because the Mayor didn't just take it out of the crate and stick it up on a post. He unwrapped it and had it wiped off carefully and put it up on a showcase for a week for everybody to see. Then he set a time for the lighting and sent word all around Orange County for one and all to come to the lamplighting. He sent men out to the swamp to cut the finest and the straightest cypress post they could find, and kept on sending them back to hunt another one until they found one that pleased him. He had talked to the people already about the hospitality ofrhe occasion.
«y'all know we can't invite people to our town just dry long so. I god, naw; We got tuh feed 'em something, and 'tain't nothin' people laks better'n barbecue. Ah'll give one whole hawg mah ownself. Seem lak all de rest uh y'all put tuhgether oughta be able tuh scrape up two mo'. Tell yo' womenfolks tuh do 'round 'bout some pies and cakes and sweet p'rater pone."
That's the way it went, too. The women got together the
Their Ryes Were Watching God • 45
sweets and the men looked after the meats. The day before the lighting, they dug a big hole in back of the store and filled it full of oak wood and burned it down to a glowing bed of coals. It took them the whole night to barbecue the three hogs. Hambo and Pearson had full charge while the others helped out with turning the meat now and then while Hambo swabbed it all over with the sauce. In between times they told stories, laughed and told more stories and sung songs. They cut all sorts of capers and whiffed the meat as it slowly came to perfection with the seasoning penetrating to the bone. The younger boys had to rig up the saw-horses with boards for the women to use as tables. Then it was after sun-up and everybody not needed went home to rest up for the feast.
By five o'clock the town was full of every kind of a vehicle and swarming with people. They wanted to see that lamp lit at dusk. Near the time, Joe assembled everybody in the street before the store and made a speech.
"Polkses, de sun is goin' down. De Sun-maker brings it up in
de mornin', and de Sun-maker sends it ruh bed at night. Us poor weak humans can't do nothin' tuh hurry it up nor to slow it down. All we can do, ifwe want any light after de settin' or befo' de risin", is tuh make some light ourselves. So dat's how come lamps was made. Dis evenin' we'se all assembled heah tuh light uh lamp. Dis occasion is something fur us all tuh remember tuh our dyin' day. De :first street lamp in uh colored town. Lift yo' eyes and gaze on it. And when Ah touch de match tuh dat lamp• wick let de light penetrate inside of yuh, and let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Brother Davis, lead us in a word uh prayer. Ask uh blessin' on dis town in uh most particular manner."
While Davis chanted a traditional prayer-poem with his own variations, Joe mounted the box that had been placed for the purpose and opened the brazen door of the lamp. As the word
46 • Zora Neale Hurston
Amen was said, he touched the lighted match to the wick, and
Mrs. Bogie's alto burst out in:
We>Jl walk in de light, de beauuful light
Come where the dew drops of mercy shine bright
Shine all around us by day and by night
Jesus, the l£ght ofthe world.
They, all of them, all of the people took it up and sung it over and over until it was wrung dry, and no further innovations of tone and tempo were conceivable. Then they hushed and ate barbecue.
When it was all over that night in bed Jody asked Janie, "Well, honey, how yuh lak bcin' Mrs. Mayor?"
"It's all right Ah reckon, but don'tyuh think it keeps us in uh kinda strain?"
"Strain? You mean de cookin' and waitin' on folks?"
"Naw, Jody, it jus' looks lak it keeps us in some way we ain't natural wid one 'nother. You'se always off talkin' and fi:xin' things, and Ah feels lak Ah'm jus' markin' time. Hope it soon gits over."
"Over, Janie? I god, Ah ain't even started good. Ah told you in de very first beginnin' dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice. You oughta be glad, 'cause dat makes uh big woman outa you,"
A feeling of coldness and fear took hold of her. She felt far away from things and lonely.
Janie soon began to feel the impact of awe and envy against her sensibilities. The wife of the Mayor was not just another woman as she had supposed. She slept with authority and so she was part of it in the town mind. She couldn't get but so dose to most of them in spirit. It was especially noticeable after Joe had forced through a town ditch to drain the street in front of the
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 47
store. They had murmured hotly about slavery being over, but every man filled his assignment.
There was something about Joe Starks that cowed the town. lt was not because of physical fear. He was no fist fighter. His bulk was not even imposing as men go. Neither was it because he was more literate than the rest. Something else made men give way before him. He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible.
Take fur instance that new house of his. It had two stories with porches, with bannisters and such things. The rest of the town looked like servants' quarters surrounding the "big house." And different from everybody else in the town he put off moving in until it had been painted, in and out. And look at the way he painted it-a gloaty, sparkly white. The kind of promenading white that the houses of Bishop Whipple, W. B. Jackson and the Vanderpool's wore. It made the village feel funny talking to him• just like he was anybody else. Then there was the matter of the spittoons. No sooner was he all set as the Mayor-post master• landlord=storekeeper, than he bought a desk like Mr. Hill or Mr. Galloway over in Maitland with one of those swing-around chairs to it. What with him biting down on cigars and saving his breath on talk and swinging round in that chair, it weakened people. And then he spit in that gold-looking vase that anylxxiy else would have been glad to put on their front-room table. Said it was a spit• toon just like his used-to-be bossman used to have in his bank up there in Atlanta. Didn't have to get up and go to the door every rime he had to spit. Didn't spit on his floor neither. Had that golded-up spitting pot right handy. But he went further than that. He bought a little lady-size spitting pot for Janie to spit in. Had it right in the parlor with little sprigs of flowers painted all around the sides. It took people by surprise because most of the women dipped snuff and of course had a spit-cup in the house. But how
48 4iJI, Zora Neale Hunton
could they know up-to-date folks was spitting in flowery little things like that? It sort of made the rest of them fed that they had been taken advantage of Like things had been kept from them. Maybe more things in the world besides spitting pots had been hid from them, when they wasn't told no better than to spit in tomato cans. It was bad enough for white people, but when one of your own color could be so different it put you on a wonder. It was like seeing your sister turn into a 'gator. A familiar strangeness. You keep seeing your sister in the 'gator and the 'gator in your sister, and you'd rather not. There was no doubt that the town respected him and even admired him in a way. But any man who walks in the way of power and property is bound to meet hate. So when speak• ers stood up when the occasion demanded and said "Our beloved Mayor," it was one of those statements that everybody says but nobody actually believes like "God is everywhere." It was just a handle to wind up the tongue with. As time went on and the ben• efits he had conferred upon the town receded in rime they sat on his store porch while he was busy inside and discussed him. Like one day after he caught Henry Pitts with a wagon load of his rib• bon cane and took the cane away from Pitts and made him leave town. Some of them thought Starks ought not to have done that. He had so much cane and everything else. But they didn't say that while Joe Starks was on the porch. When the mail came from Mair land and he went inside to sort it out everybody had their say.
Sim Jones started off as soon as he was sure that Starks couldn't hear him.
"It's uh sin and uh shame runnin' .
"Hcab come mah order right now," Charlie Jones announces
and scrambles off the porch to meet them. Rut he has plenty of competition. A pushing, shoving show of gallantry. They all beg the girls to just buy anything they can think of. Please let them pay for it. Joe is begged to wrap up all the candy in the store and order more. All the peanuts and soda watcr-c-evcryrhing!
«Gal, Ah'm crazy 'bout you," Charlie goes on to the enter• tainment of everybody. "Ah 'll do anything in the world except work for you and give you mah money."
The girls and everybody else help laugh. They know it's not courtship. It's acting-out courtship and everybody is in the play. The three girls hold the center of the stage till Daisy Blunt comes walking down the street in the moonlight.
Daisy is walking a drum tune. You can almost hear it by look•
ing at the way she walks. She is black and she knows that white clothes look good on her, so she wears them for dress up. She's got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money and she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too. Her hair is not what you might call straight. It's negro hair, but it's got a kind of white fla-
68 • Zora Neale Hurston
vor. Like the piece of string out of a ham. It's not ham at all, but it's been around ham and got the flavor. It was spread down thick and heavy over her shoulders and looked just right under a big white hat.
"Lawd, Lawd, Lawd," that same Charlie Jones exclaims
rushing over to Daisy. "It must be uh recess in heben if St. Peter is lettin' his angels out lak dis. You got three men already layin' at de point uh death 'bout yuh, and heah's uhnother fool dat's willin' tuh make time on yo' gang."
All the rest of the single men have crowded around Daisy by this time. She is parading and blushing at the same time.
"Ifyou knowanybodydat's 'bout tub die 'bout me, yuh know more'n Ah do," Daisy bridled. "Wisht Ah knowed who it is."
"Now, Daisy, you know Jim, and Dave and Lum is 'bout tuh kill one 'nether 'bout you. Don't stand up here and tell dat big ole got-dat-wrong."
"Dey a mighty hush-mouf about it if dcy is. Dey ain't never told me nothin' ."
"Unhunh, you talked too fast. Heah, Jim and Dave is right upon de porch and Lum is inside de store."
A big burst oflaughter at Daisy's discomfiture. The boys had to act out their rivalry too. Only this time, everybody knew they meant some ofir. But all the same the porch enjoyed the play and helped out whenever extras were needed.
David said, "Jim don'tlove Daisy. He don'tloveyuhlakAhdo."
Jim bellowed indignantly, "Who don't love Daisy? Ah know you ain't talkin' 'bout me."
Dave: "Well all right, less prove dis thing right now. We'll prove right now who love dis gal de best. How much time is you willin' tuh make fuh Daisy?"
Jim: "Twenty yeahs!"
Dave: "See? Ah told yuh dat nigger didn't love yuh. Me,
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 69
Ah'll beg de Judge tuh hang me, and wouldn't take norhin' less than life."
There was a big long laugh from the porch. Then Jim had to
demand a test.
"Dave, how much would you be will in' tuh do for Daisy if she was to turn fool enough tuh marry yuh?"
"Mc and Daisy done talked dat over, but if you just got tuh
know, Ah'd buy Daisy uh passenger train and give it tuh her." "Humph! Is dat all? Ah'd buy her uh steamship and then
Ah'd hire some mens hill nm it fur her."
"Daisy, don't let Jim fool you wid his talk. He don't aim tuh do nothin' fuh yuh. Uh Iii olc steamship! Daisy, Ah'll take uh job cleanin' out de Atlantic Ocean fuh you any time you say you so desire." There was a great laugh and then they hushed to listen.
"Daisy," Jim began, "you know mah heart and all de ranges
uh mah mind. And you know if Ah wuz rid.in' up in uh caroplane way up in de sky and Ah looked down and seen you walk.in' and knowed you'd have tub walk ten miles tuh git home, Ah'd step backward offa dat earoplane just to walk home wid you."
There was one of those big blow-out laughs and Janie was
wallowing in it. Then Jody ruined it all for her.
Mrs. Bogle came walking down the street towards the porch. Mrs. Bogle who was many times a grandmother, but had a blushing air of coquetry about her that cloaked her sunken checks. You saw a fluttering fan before her face and magnolia blooms and sleepy lakes under the moonlight when she walked. There was no obvious reason for it, it was just so. Her first hus• band had been a coachman but "studied jury" to win her. He had finally become a preacher to hold her till his death. Her second husband worked in Fohnes orange grove-but tried to preach when he caught her eye. He never got any further than a class leader, but that was something to offer her. It proved his
70 4J> Zora Neale Hurston
love and pride. She was a wind on the ocean. She moved men, but the helm determined the port. Now, this night she mounted the steps and the men noticed her until she passed inside the door.
"I god, Janie," Starks said impatiently, "why don't you go on
and see whut Mrs. Bogle want? Whutyou waitin' on)"
Janie wanted to hear the rest of the play-acting and how it ended, but she got up sullenly and went inside. She came back to the porch with her bristles sticking out all over her and with dis• satisfaction written all over her face. Joe saw it and lifted his own hackles a bit.
Jim Weston had secretly borrowed a dime and soon he was loudly beseeching Daisy to have a treat on him. Finally she con• sented to take a pickled pig foot on him. Janie was getting up a large order when they came in, so Lum waited on them. That is, he went back to the keg but came back without the pig foot.
"Mist' Starks, de pig feets is all gone!" he called out.
"Aw naw dey ain't, Lum. Ah bought uh whole new kag of
'em wid dat last order from Jacksonville. It come in yistiddy."
Joe came and helped Lum look but he couldn't find the new keg either, so he went to the nail over his desk that he used for a file to search for the order.
"Janie, where's dar last bill uh ladin?"
"It's right dcre on de nail, ain't it?"
"Naw it ain't neither. You ain't put it where Ah told yuh tuh. If you'd git yo' mind out de streets and keep it on yo' business maybe you could git somethin' straight sometimes."
"Aw, look around dere, Jody. Dar bill ain't apt tuh be gone off nowheres. Ifit ain't hangin' on de nail, it's on yo' desk. You bound tuh find it if you look."
"Wid you heah, Ah oughtn't tub hafta do all dat lookin' and
searchin'. Ah done told you time and time agin tuh stick all dem
Their Eyes Were Watching God ,IJjp 71
papers on store than you got money tub pay for. I god, dis ain't Gimme, Florida, dis is Eatonville." Another time she overheard him using Joe's favorite expression for pointing out the differences between himself and the careless-living, mouthy town. "Ah'm an educated man, Ah keep mah arrangements in mah hand'>." She laughed outright at that. His acting didn't hurt nobody and she wouldn't know what to do without him. He sensed that and came· to treat her like baby• sister, asifto say "You poor little thing, give it to big brother. He'll fix it for you." His sense of ownership made him honest too, except for an occasional jaw-breaker, or a packet of sen-sen. The sen-sen was to let on to the other boys and the pullet-size girls that he had a liquor breath to cover. This business of managing stores and women store-owners was trying on a man's nerves. He needed a drink of liquor now and then to keep up.
When Janie emerged into her mourning white, she had hosts of admirers in and out of town. Everything open and frank. Men of property too among the crowd, but nobody seemed to get any further than the store. She was always too busy to take them to the house to entertain. They were all so respectful and stiff with
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 93
her, that she might have been the Empress of Japan. They felt that it was not fitting to mention desire to the widow of Joseph Starks. You spoke of honor and respect. And all that they said and did was refracted by her inattention and shot off towards the rim• bones of nothing. She and Pheoby Watson visited back and forth and once in awhile sat around the Jakes and fished. She was just basking in freedom for the most part without the need for thought. A Sanford undertaker was pressing his cause through Pheoby, and Janie was listening pleasantly but undisturbed. It might be nice to marry him, at that. No hurry. Such things take rime to think about, or rather she pretended to Pheoby that that was what she was doing.
"'Tain't dat Ah worries over Joe's death, Pheoby. Ah jus' loves dis freedom."
"Sh-sh-sh! Don't let nobody hear you say dat, Janie. Folks will say you ain't sorry he's gone."
"Let 'em say whut dey wants tub, Pheoby. To my think.in'
mourning oughtn't tuh last no 1onger'n grief."
1•0
One day Hezekiah asked offfrom work to go offwith the bait team. Janie told him not to hurry back. She could dose up the store herself this once. He cautioned her about the catches on the win• dows and doors and swaggered off to Winter Park.
Business was dull all day, because numbers of people had gone to the game. She decided to dose early, because it was hardly worth the trouble of keeping open on an afternoon like this. She had set six o'clock as her limit.
At five-thirty a tall man came into the place. Janie was lean• ing on the counter making aimless pencil marks on a piece of wrapping paper, She knew she didn't know his name, but he looked familiar.
"Good evenin', Mis' Starks," he said with a sly grin as if they had a good joke together. She was in favor of the story that was making him laugh before she even heard it.
"Good evenin'," she answered pleasantly. "You got all de advantage 'cause Ah don't know yo' name."
"People wouldn't know me lak dey would you."
"Ah guess standin' in uh store do make uh person git tuh be
known in de vicinity. Look lak Ah seen you somewhere."
"Oh, Ah don't live no further than Orlandah. Ah'm easy
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 95
tuh see on Church Street most any day or night. You got any smokin' tobacco!"
She opened the glass case. "What kind!" "Camels."
She handed over the cigarettes and took the money. He
broke the pack and thrust one between his full, purple lips. "You got a lil piece uh fire over dere, lady?"
They both laughed and she handed him two kitchen matches
out of a box for that purpose. It was time for him to go but he didn't. He leaned on the counter with one elbow and cold• cocked her a look.
"Why ain't you at de ball game, too? Everybody else is dcre."
"Well, Ah see somebody else besides me ain't dere. Ah just sold some cigarettes." They laughed again.
"Dar's 'cause Ah'm dumb. Ah got de thing all mixed up. Ah
thought de game was gointuh be out at Hungerford. So Ah got uh ride tuh 'Where dis road turns off from de Dixie Highway and walked over here and then Ah find out de game is in Winter Park."
That was funny to both of them too.
"So what you goinruh do now? All de cars in Eatonville is gone."
"How about playin' you some checkers? You looks hard tuh
beat."
"Ah is, 'cause Ah can't play uh lick." "You don't cherish de game, then?"
"Yes, Ah do, and then agin Ah don't know whether Ah do or not, 'cause nobody ain't never showed me how."
"Dis is de last day for dat excuse. You got uh board round
heah?"
"Yes indeed. De men folks treasures de game round heah. Ah just ain't never learnt how."
He set it up and began to show her and she found herself
96 • Zora Neale Hurston
glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice. She looked him over and got little thrills from every one of his good points. Those full, lazy eyes with the lashes curling sharply away like drawn scimitars. The lean, over-padded shoulders and narrow waist. Even nice!
He was jumping her king! She screamed in protest against losing the king she had had such a hard time acquiring. Before she knew it she had grabbed his hand to stop him. He struggled gallantly to free himself. That is he struggled, but not hard enough to wrench a lady's :fingers.
"Ah got uh right tuh take it. You left it right in mah way." "Yeah, but Ah wuz lookin' off when you went and stuck yo'
men right up next tuh mine. No fair!"
"You ain't supposed tuh look off, Mis' Starks. It's de biggest part uh de game tuh watch out! Leave go mah hand."
"No suh! Not mah king. You kin take another one, but not dat one."
They scrambled and upset the board and laughed at that. "Anyhow it's time for uh Coca-Cola," he said. "Ah'll come
teach yuh some mo' another time."
"It's all right tuh come teach me, but don't come tuh cheat me."
"Yuh can't beat uh woman. Dey jes won't stand fob it. But Ah'll come teach yuh agin. You gointuh be uh good player too, after while."
"You reckon so? Jody useter tell me Ah never would learn. It wuz too heavy fuh mah brains."
"Folks is playin' it wid sense and folks is playin' it without.
But you got good meat on yo' head. You'll learn. Have uh cool
drink on me."
"Oh all right, thank yuh. Got plenty cold ones tuhday. Nobody ain't been heah tub buy none. All gone off tuh de game."
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 97
"You oughta be at de next game. 'Tain't no use in you stayin' heah if everybody else is gone. You don't buy from yo'self, do yuh'" "You crazy thing! 'Course Ah don't. But Ah'm worried
'bout you uh little."
"How come) 'Fraid Ah ain't gointuh pay fuh dese drinks?" "Aw naw! How you gointuh git back homei'"
"Wait round hcah fuh a car. If none don't come, Ah got good shoe leather. "Iain"t but scben miles no how. Ah could walk dat in no time. Easy,"
"If it wuz me, Ah'd wait on uh train. Seben miles is uh kinda
long walk."
"It would be for you, 'cause you ain't used to it. ButAh'm seen women walk further'n dat. You could too, if yuh had it tuh do."
"Maybe so, but Ah'll ride de train long as Ah got railroad fare."
"Ah don't need no pocket-full uh money to ride de train lak
uh woman. When Ah takes uh notion Ah rides anyhow-money or no money."
"Now ain't you somethin'! Mr. er--er-You never did tell
me whut yo' name wuz."
"Ah sho didn't. Wuzn 't expectin' fuh it to be needed. De name mah mama gimme is Vergible Woods. Dey calls me Tea Cake for short."
"Tea Cake! So you sweet as all dat?" She laughed and he gave
her a little cut-eye look to get her meaning.
"Ah may be guilty. You better try me and see."
She did something halfway between a laugh and a frown and he set his hat on straight.
"B'Iieve Ah done cut uh hawg, so Ah guess Ah better ketch air." He made an elaborate act of tipping to the door stealthily. Then looked back at her with an irresistible grin on his face. Janie burst out laughing .in spite of herself. "You crazy thing!"
98 • Zora Neale Hurston
He turned and threw his hat at her feet. "If she don't throw it at me, Ah'll take a chance on comin' back," he announced, making gestures to indicate he was hidden behind a post. She picked up the hat and threw it after him 'With a laugh. "Even if she had uh brick she couldn't hurt yuh wid it," he said to an invisible companion. "De lady can't throw." He gestured to his compan• ion, stepped out from behind the imaginary lamp post, set his coat and hat and strolled back to where Janie was as if he had just come in the store.
"Evenin', .Mis' Starks. Could yuh lemme have uh pound uh
knuckle puddin" till Saturday? Ah 'm sho tuh pay yuh then." "You needs ten pounds, Mr. Tea Cake. Ah'll let yuh have all
Ah got and you needn't bother 'bout payin' it back."
They joked and went on till the people began to come in. Then he took a seat and made talk and laughter with the rest until closing time. When everyone else had left he said, "Ah reckon Ah done ovcr-laycd mah leavin' time, but Ah figgured you needed somebody tuh help yuh shut up de place. Since nobody else ain't round heah, maybe Ah kin git de job."
"Thankyuh, Mr. Tea Cake. It is kinda strainin' fuh me." "Who ever heard of uh teacake bein' called Mister! If you
wanta be real hightoned and call me Mr. Woods, dat's de way you feel about it. If yuh wants tuh be uh lil friendJy and call me Tea Cake, dat would be real nice." He was closing and bolting 'Win• dows all the time he talked.
"All right, then. Thank yuh, Tea Cake. How's dat!"
"Jes lak uh lil girl wid her Easter dress on. Even nice!" He locked the door and shook it to be sure and handed her the key. "Come on now, Ah'll see yuh inside yo' door and git on down de Dixie."
• A beating with the fist.
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 99
Janie was halfway down the palm-lined walk before she had a thought for her safety. Maybe this strange man was up to some• thing! But it was no place to show her fear there in the darkness between the house and the store. He had hold of her arm too. Then in a moment it was gone. Tea Cake wasn't strange. Seemed as if she had known him aJ1 her life. Look how she had been able to talk with him right off He tipped his hat at the door and was off with the briefest good night.
So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its
amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.
11
Janie wanted to ask Hezekiah about Tea Cake, but she was afraid he might misunderstand her and think she was interested. In the first place he looked too young for her. Must be around twenty• five and here she was around forty. Then again he didn't look like he had too much. Maybe he was hanging around to get in with her and strip her of all that she had. Just as well if she never saw him again. He was probably the kind of man who lived with var• ious women but never married. Fact is, she decided to treat him so cold ifhe ever did foot the place that he'd be sure not to come hanging around there again.
He waited a week exactly to come back for Janie's snub. It was early in the afternoon and she and Hezekiah were alone. She heard somebody humming like they were feeling for pitch and looked towards the door. Tea Cake stood there mimicking the tuning of a guitar. He frowned and struggled with the pegs of his imaginary instrument watching her out of the corner of his eye with that secret joke playing over his face. Finally she smiled and he sung middle C, put his guitar under his arm and walked on back to where she was.
"Evenin', folks. Thought y'all might lak uh lil music this
evenin' so Ah brought long mah box."
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 101
"Crazy thing!" Janie commented, beaming out with light. He acknowledged the compliment with a smile and sat down
on a box. "Anybody have uh Coca-Cola wid me?"
"Ah just had one," Janie temporized with her conscience. "It'll hafi:er be done all over agin, Mis' Starks."
"How come!"
=Cause it wasn't done right dat time. 'Kiah bring us two bottles from de bottom uh de box."
"How you been makin' out since Ah seen yuh last, Tea
Cake?"
"Can't kick. Could be worse. Made four days dis week and got de pay in mah pocket."
"We got a rich man round here, then. Buyin' passenger trains
uh battleships this week?"
""Which one do you want? It all depends on you."
"Oh, ifyou'se treatin' me tuh it, Ah b'Iieve Ah'll take de pas•
senger train. If it blow up Ah'll still be on land."
"Choose de battleship if dat's whut you really want. Ah know where one is right now. Seen one round Key West de other day."
"How you gointuh git it?"
"Ah shucks. dem Admirals is always ole folks. Can't no ole man stop me from gittin' no ship for yuh if dat's whut you want, Ah'd git dat ship out from under him so slick till he'd be walkin' de water lak ole Peter befo' he knowed it."
They played away the evening again. Everybody was surprised at Janie playing checkers but they liked it. Three or four stood behind her and coached her moves and generally made merry with her in a restrained way. Finally everybody went home but Tea Cake, "You kin dose up, 'Kiah," Janie said. "Think Ah'll g'wan
home."
Tea Cake fell in beside her and mounted the porch this time.
So she offered him a seat and they made a lot oflaughter out of
102 • Zora Neale Hurston
nothing. Near eleven o'clock she remembered a piece of pound cake she had put away. Tea Cake went out to the lemon tree at the corner of the kitchen and picked some lemons and squeezed them for her. So they had lemonade too.
"Moon's too prettyfuh anybody tuh be sieepin' it away," Tea
Cake said after they had washed up the plates and glasses. "Less
us gofishin'."
"Fishin'? Dis time uh night?"
"Unhhunh, fishin'. Ah know where de bream Ls beddin'. Seen 'em when Ah come round de lake dis evenin'. Where's yo' fishin' poles? Less go set on de lake."
It was so crazy digging worms by lamp light and setting out for Lake Sabelia after midnight that she felt like a child breaking rules. That's what made Janie like it. They caught two or three and got home just before day. Then she had to smuggle Tea Cake out by the back gate and that made it seem like some great secret she was keeping from the town.
"Mis' Janie," Hezekiah began sullenly next day, "you oughtn't
'low der Tea Cake tuh be walkin' tuh de house wid yuh. Ah'!l go wid yuh mahself after dis, if you'se skeered."
"What's de matter wid Tea Cake, 'Kiah? Is he uh thief uh somethin'?"
"Ah ain't never heard nobody say he stole norbin'."
"Is he bad 'bout totin' pistols and knives tuh hurt people wid?"
"Dey don't say he ever cut nobody or shot nobody neither." "Well, Ls he-he-is he got uh wife or something lak. dat?
Not dar it's any uh mah business." She held her breath for the answer.
"No'm. And nobody wouldn't marry Tea Cake tuh starve tuh death lessen it's somebody jes lak him-c-ain'r used to nothin'.
'Course he always keep hisself in changin' clothes. Dat long-
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 103
legged Tea Cake ain't got doodly squat. He ain't got no business makin' hissef familiar wid nobody lak you. Ah said Ah wuz goin' to tell yuh so yuh could know."
"Oh dar's all right, Hezekiah. Thank yuh mighty much." The next night when she mounted her steps Tea Cake was
there before her, sitting on the porch in the dark. He had a string
of fresh-caught trout for a present.
"Ah'll clean 'em, you fry 'em and let's eat," he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate. Then Tea Cake went to the piano without so much as asking and began playing blues and singing, and throwing grins over his shoulder. The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy.
"Tea Cake, where you git uh comb from ruh be combin' mah
hair wid?"
"Ah brought it wid me. Come prepared tuh lay mah hands on it tuhnight."
"Why, Tea Cake? Whut good do combin' mah hair do you?
It's mah comfortable, not yourn."
"It's mine too. Ah ain't been sleepin' so good for more'n uh week cause Ah been wishin' so bad tuh git mah hands in yo' hair. It's so pretty. It feels jus' lak underneath uh dove's wing next to mah face."
"Umph! You'se mighty easy satisfied. Ah been had dis same
hair next tuh mah face ever since Ah cried de fust time, and 'tain't never gimme me no thrill."
"Ah tell you lak you told me-you'se mighty hard tub satisfy.
Ah betcha dem lips don't satisfy yuh neither."
"Dat's right, Tea Cake. They's dere and Ah make use of'em whenever it's necessary, but norhin' special tuh me."
104 • Zor.i Neale Hurston
"Umph! umph! umphl Ah betcha you don't never go ruh de lookin' glass and enjoy yo' eyes yo'self. You lets other folks git all de enjoyment out of 'cm 'thout takin' in any of it yo'self."
"Naw, Ah never gazes at 'em in de lookin' glass. If anybody else gits any pleasure out of'em Ah ain't been told about it."
"See dat? You'se got de world in uh jug and make out you don't know it. Rut Ah'm glad tuh be de one tuh tell yuh."
"Ah guess you done told plenty women all about it."
"Ah'm de Apostle Paul tuh de Gentiles. Ah tells 'em and then agin Ah shows 'em."
"Ah thought so." She yawned and made to get up from the sofa, "You done got me so sleepy wid yo' head-scrarchin' Ah kin hardly make it tuh de bed." She stood up at once, collecting her hair. He sat still.
"Naw, you ain't sleepy, Mis' Janie. You jus' want me tuh go. You figger Ah'm uh rounder and uh pimp and you done wasted too much time talkin' wid me."
"Why, Tea Cake! Wlmt ever put dat notion in yo' head?" "De way you looked at me when Ah said whut Ah did. Yo'
face skeered me so bad till mah whiskers drawed up."
"Ah ain't got no business bein' mad at nothin' you do and say. You got it all wrong. Ah ain't mad atall."
"Ah know it and dat's what puts de shamery on me. You'se jus' disgusted wid me. Yo' face ius' left here and went off somewhere else. Naw, you ain't mad wid me. Ah be glad if you was, 'cause then Ah might do somethin' tuh please yuh. Rut lak it is-"
"Mah likes and dislikes ought not tuh make no difference wid you, Tea Cake. Dat's fuh yo' lady friend. Ah'm jus' uh some• time friend uh yourn."
Janie walked towards the stairway slowly, and Tea Cake sat where he was, as ifhe had frozen to his seat, in fear that once he
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 105
got up, he'd never get back in it again. He swallowed hard and looked at her walk away.
"Ah didn't aim ruh let on tuh yuh 'bout it, leastways not right away, but Ah ruther be shot wid tacks than fuh you tuh act wid me lak you is right now. You got me in de go-long."
At the newel post Janie whirled around and for the space of a thought she was lit up like a transfiguration. Her next thought brought her crashing down. He's just saying anything for the time being, feeling he's got me so I'll b'lieve him. The next thought buried her under tons of cold futility. He's trading on being younger than me. Getting ready to laugh at me for an old fool. But oh, what wouldn't I give to be twelve years younger so I could b'lieve him!
"'Aw, Tea Cake, you just say d.at tuhnight because de fish and corn bread tasted sort of good. Tomorrow yo' mind would change."
"Naw, it wouldn't neither. Ah know better."
"Anyhow from what you told me when we wuz back dere in de kitchen Ah'm nearly twelve years older than you."
"Ah done thought all about dat and tried tuh struggle aginst
it, but it don't do me no good. De thought uh mah youngness don't satisfy me lak yo' presence do."
"It makes uh whole heap uh difference wid most folks, Tea
Cake."
"Things lak dat got uh whole lot tuh do wid convenience, but it ain't got nothin' tuh do wid love."
"Well, Ah love tuh find out whut you think after sun-up tomorrow. Dis is jus' yo' night thought."
"You got yo' ideas and Ah got mine. Ah got uh dollar dat says you'se wrong. But Ah reckon you don't bet money, nei• ther."
"Ah never have done it so fur. But as de old folks always say,
106 • Zora Neale Hurston
Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' whur Ah'm liable ruh do yet."
He got up suddenly and took his hat. "Good night, Mis'
Janie. Look lak we done run our conversation from grass roots tuh pine trees. G'bye." He almost ran out of the door.
Janie hung over the newel post thinking so long that she all but went to sleep there. However, before she went to bed she took a good look at her mouth, eyes and hair.
All next day in the house and store she thought resisting
thoughts about Tea Cake. She even ridiculed him in her mind and was a little ashamed of the association. But every hour or two the battle had to be fought all over again. She couldn't make him look just like any other man to her. He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom-a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.
So he didn't come that night and she laid in bed and pre• tended to think scornfully of him. "Bet he's hangin' round some jook or 'nether. Glad Ah treated him cold. Whut do Ah want wid some trashy nigger out de streets! Bet he's livin' wid some woman or 'nether and takin' me for uh fool. Glad Ah caught mahself in time." She tried to console herself thar way.
The next morning she awoke hearing a knocking on the front door and found Tea Cake there.
"Hello, .Mis' Janie, Ah hope Ah woke you up."
"You sho did, Tea Cake. Come in and rest yo' hat. Whut you
and eased himself into the chair. She still didn't say anything. He sat stroking her head and looking down into her face.
"Ah see whut it is, You doubted me 'bout de money. Thought Ah had done took it and gone. Ah don't blame yuh but it wasn't lak. you think. De girl baby ain't born and her mama is dead, dat can git me tuh spend our money on her. Ah told yo' before dat you got de keys tuh de kingdom. You can depend on dat."
"Still and all you went off and left me all day and all night."
"'Twasn't 'cause Ah wanted tuh stay offlak dat, and it sho Lewd, wuzn't no woman. If you didn't have de JX>Wer tuh hold me and hold me tight, Ah wouldn't be callin' yuh Mis' Woods. Ah met plenty women before Ah knowed you tuh talk tuh. You'se de onliest woman in de world Ah ever even mentioned gitting married ruh. You bein' older don't make no difference. Don't never consider dat no mo'. If Ah ever girs tuh messin' round another woman it won't be on account of her age. It'll be because she got me in de same way you got me-so Ah can't help mahsclf."
He sat down on the floor beside her and kissed and playfully turned up the corner of her mouth until she smiled.
"Looka here, folks," he announced to an imaginary audi•
ence, "Sister Woods is 'bout tuh quit her husband!"
Janie laughed at that and let herself lean on him. Then she announced to the same audience, "Mis' Woods got herself uh new HI boy rooster, but he been off somewhere and won't tell her."
"First thing, though. us got tuh eat together, Janie. Then we can talk."
122 • Zora Neale Hurston
"One thing, Ah won't send you out after no fish."
He pinched her in the side and ignored what she said. "'Tain't no need of neither one of us workin' dis mornin'.
Call Mis' Samuels and let her fix whatever you want."
"Tea Cake, if you don't hurry up and tell me, Ah 'll take and beat yo' head flat as uh dime."
Tea Cake stuck out till he had some breakfast, then he talked
and acted out the story.
He spied the money while he was tying his tic. He took it up and looked at it out of curiosity and put it in his pocket to count it while he was out to find some fish to fry. When he found out how much it was, he was excited and felt like letting folks know who he was. Before he found the fish market he met a fellow he used to work with at the round house. One word brought on another one and pretty soon he made up his mind to spend some of it. He never had had his hand on so much money before in his life, so he made up his mind to see how it felt to be a millionaire. They went on out to Callahan round the railroad shops and he decided to give a big chicken and macaroni supper that night, free to all.
He bought up the stuff and they found somebody to pick the
guitar so they could all dance some. So they sent the message all around for people to come. And come they did. A big table loaded down with fried chicken and biscuits and a wash-tub full of macaroni with plenty cheese in i.t. When the fellow began to
pick the box the people"'begin to come from east, west, north and
Australia. And he stood in the door and paid all the ugly women
two dollars nut to come in. One big meriny colored woman was so ugly till i.t was worth five dollars for her not to come in, so he gave it to her.
They had a big time till one man come in who thought he was bad. He tried to pull and haul over all the chickens and pick
Their Byes Were Watching God "'1iilll' 123
out the livers and gizzards to eat. Nobody else couldn't pacify him so they called Tea Cake to come see ifhe could stop him. So Tea Cake walked up and asked him, "Say, whut's de matter wid you, nohow?"
"Ah don't want nobody handin' me nothin'. Specially don't
issue me out no rations. Ah always chooses mah rations." He kept right on plowing through the pile uh chicken. So Tea Cake got mad.
"You got mo' nerve than uh brass monkey. Tell me, what
post office did you ever pee in? Ah craves tuh know." "Whut you mean by dat now?" the fellow asked.
"Ah means dis-it takes jus' as much nerve tub cut caper lak dat in uh United States Government Post Office as it do tuh comes pullin' and haulin' over any chicken Ah pay for. Hit de ground. Damned if Ah ain't gointuh try you dis night."
So they all went outside to see if Tea Cake could handle the
boogerboo. Tea Cake knocked out two of his teeth, so that man went on off from there, Then two men tried to pick a fight with one another, so Tea Cake said they had to kiss and make up. They didn't want to do it. They'd rather go to jail, but everybody else liked the idea, so they made 'em do it. Afterwards, both of them spit and gagged and wiped their mouths with the back of their hands. One went outside and chewed a little grass like a sick dog, he said to keep it from killing him.
Then everybody began to holler at the music because the man couldn't play but three pieces. So Tea Cake took the guitar and played himself. He was glad of the chance because he hadn't had his hand on a box since he put his in the pawn shop to get some money to hire a car for Janie soon after he met her. He missed his music. So that put him in the notion he ought to have one. He bought the guitar on the spot and paid fifteen dollars cash. It was really worth sixty-five any day.
124 • Zora Neale Hurston
Just before day the party wore out. So Tea Cake hurried on back to his new wife. He had done found out how rich people fed and he had a fine guitar and twelve dollars left in his pocket and all
he needed now was a great big old hug and kiss from Janie.
"You musta thought yo' wife was powerful ugly. Dem ugly women dat you paid rwo dollars not to come in, could git tuh de door. You never even 'lowed me ruh git "
"So you aims tuh partake wid everything, hunh?" "Yeah, Tea Cake, don't keer what it is."
"Oat's all Ah wants tuh know. From now on you'se mah wife and mah woman and everything else in de world Ah needs."
"Ah hope so."
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 125
"And honey, don't you worry 'bout yo' lil ole rwo hundred dollars. It's big pay day dis comin' Saturday at de railroad yards. Ah 'm gointuh take dis twelve dollars in mah pocket and win it all back and mo'."
"How?"
"Honey, since you loose me and gimme privilege ruh tell yuh all about mahself Ah'll tell yuh. You done married one uh de best gamblers God ever made. Cards or dice either one. Ah can take uh shoe string and win uh tan-yard. Wish yuh could see me rollm'. But dis time it's gointuh be nothin' but tough men's talkin' all kinds uh talk so it ain't no place for you tuh be, but
'twon't be long befo' you see me."
All the rest of the week Tea Cake was busy practising up on his dice. He would flip them on the bare floor, on the rug and on the bed. He'd squat and throw, sit in a chair and throw and stand and throw. It was very exciting to Janie who had never touched dice in her life. Then he'd take his deck of cards and shuffle and cut, shuffle and cut and deal out then examine each hand care• fully, and do it again. So Saturday came. He went out and bought a new switch .. blade knife and two decks of star-back playing cards that morning and left Janie around noon.
"They'll start to paying off, pretty soon now. Ah wants tub
git in de game whilst de big money is in rt. Ah ain't fuh no spud• din' tuhday. Ah 'll come home wid de money or Ah '11 come back on uh stretcher." He cut nine hairs out of the mole of her head for luck and went off happy.
Janie waited till midnight without worrying, but after that she
began to be afraid. So she got up and sat around scared and miser• able. Thinking and fearing all sorts of dangers. Wondering at her• self as she had many times this week that she was not shocked at Tea Cake's gambling. It was part of him, so it was all right. She rather found herself angry at imaginary people who might try to
126 • Zora Neale Hurston
criticize. Let the old hypocrites learn to mind their own business, and leave other folks alone. Tea Cake wasn't doing a bit more harm trying to win hisself a little money than they was always doing with their lying tongues. Tea Cake had more good nature under his toe-nails than they had in their so-called Christian hearts. She better not hear none of them old backbiters talking about her husband! Please, Jesus, don't let them nasty niggers hurt her boy. If they do, Master Jesus, grant her a good gun and a chance to shoot 'em. Tea Cake had a knife it was true, but that was only to protect hisself. God knows, Tea Cake: wouldn't harm a fly.
Daylight was creeping around the cracks of the world when Janie heard a feeble rap on the door. She sprung to the door and flung it wide, Tea Cake was out there looking like he was asleep standing up. In some strange way it was frightening. Janie caught his arm to arouse him and he stumbled into the room and fell.
"Tea Cake! You chile! What's de matter, honey?"
"Dey cut me, dar's all. Don't cry. Git me out dis coat quick as yuh can."
He told her he wasn't cut but twice but she had to have him naked so she could look him all over and fix him up to a certain extent. He told her not to call a doctor unless he got much worse. It was mostly loss of blood anyhow.
"Ah won the money jus' lak ah told yuh. Round midnight Ah had yo' two hundred dollars and wuz ready tuh quit even though it wuz uh heap mo' money in de game. But dey wanted uh chance tub win it back so Ah set back down tub play some mo'. Ah knowed ole Double-Ugly wuz 'bout broke and wanted tuh fight 'bout it, so Ah set down tuh give 'im his chance tuh git back his money and then to give 'im uh quick trip tuh hell if he tried tub pull dat razor Ah glimpsed in his pocket. Honey, no up-to• date man don't fool wid no razor. De man wid his switch-blade will be done cut yuh tuh death while you foolin' wid uh razor.
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 127
But Double-Ugly brags he's too fast wid it tuh git hurt, but Ah knowed better.
"So round four o'clock Ah had done deaned 'em out com•
plete-all except two men dat got up and left while dcy had money for groceries, and one man dat wuz lucky. Then Ah rose tuh bid 'em good bye agin. None of'em didn'tlakit, but dey all realized it wuz fair. Ah had done give 'em a fair chance. All but Double-Ugly. He claimed Ah switched de dice. Ah shoved de money down deep in mah pocket and picked up mah hat and coat wid mah left hand and kept mah right hand on mah knife. Ah didn't keer what he said long as he didn't try tuh do nothin'. Ah got mah hat on and one arm in mah coat as Ah got to de door. Right dere he jumped at me as Ah turned to see de doorstep out• side and cut me twice in de back.
"Baby, Ah run mah other arm in mah coat-sleeve and grabbed dat nigger by his necktie befo' he could bat his eye and then Ah wuz all over 'im jus' lak gravy over rice. He lost his razor tryin' tuh git loose from me. He wuz hollerin' for me tub turn him loose, but baby, Ah turnt him every way but loose. Ah left him on the doorstep and got here to yuh de quickest way Ah could. Ah know Ah ain't cut too deep 'cause he was too skeered ruh run up on me close enough. Sorta pull de flesh together with stickin' plaster. Ah'll be all right in uh day or so."
Janie was painting on iodine and crying.
"You ain't de one to be cryin', Janie. It's his ole lady oughta do dat. You done gimme luck. Look in mah left hand pants pocket and see whut yo' daddy brought yuh. When Ah tell yuh Ah 'm gointuh bring it, Ah don't lie."
They counted it together-three hundred and twenty-two dollars. It was almost like Tea Cake had held up the Paymaster. He made her take the two hundred and put it back in the secret place. Then Janie told him about the other money she had in the bank.
128 • Zora Neale Hurston
"Put dat two hundred back wid de rest, Janie. Mah dice. Ah no need no assistance tuh help me feed mah woman. From now on, you gointuh eat whutever mah money can buy yuh and wear de same. When Ah ain't got nothin' you don't git nothin'."
"Dar's all right wid me."
He was getting drowsy, but he pinched her leg playfully because he was glad she took things the way he wanted her to. "Listen, mama, soon as Ah git over dis lil cuttin' scrape, we goin• tuh do somethin' crazy."
"Whut's Do dot" Everybody was watching that next card fall. Ed got ready to turn. "Ah'm gointuh sweep out hell and burn up de broom." He slammed down another dollar. "Don't oversport yourself, Ed," Bootyny challenged. "You girtin' too yaller." Ed caught hold of the corner of the card. Sop dropped a dollar. "Ah'm gointuh shoot in de hearse, don't keer how sad de funeral be." Ed said, "You see how this man is reasin' hell'" Tea Cake nudged Sop not to bet. "You gointuh git caught in uh bullet
storm if you don't watch out." Sop said, "Aw 'tain'r nothin' tuh
dat bear but his curly hair. Ah can look through muddy water and see dry land." Ed turned off the card and hollered, "Zachariah, Ah says come down out dat sycamore tree. You can't do no business." Nobody fell on that card. Everybody was scared of the next one. Ed looked around and saw Gabe standing behind his chair and hollered, "Move, from over me, Gabe! You too black. You draw
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 135
heat! Sop, you wanta pick up dat bet whilst you got uh chance?" "Naw, man, Ah wish Ah had uh thousand-leg tuh put on it." "So yuh won't lissen, huh? Dumb niggers and free schools. Ah'm goin• tuh take and teach yuh. Ah'll main-line but Ah won't side-track." Ed flipped the next card and Sop fell and lost. Everybody hollered and laughed. Ed laughed and said, "Git off de muck) You ain't nothin'. Dat's all! ·Hot boilin' water won't help yuh none." Ed kept on laughing because he had been so scared before. "Sop, Bootyny, all y'all dat lemme win yo' money: Ah'm sending it straight off to Sears and Roebuck and buy me some clothes, and when Ah turn out Christmas day, it would take a doctor to tell me how near Ah is dressed tuh death."
1•5
Janie learned what itfelt like to be jealous. A little chunkygirt took to picking a play out of Tea Cake in the fields and in the quarters. Ifhe said anything at all) she'd take the opposite side and hit him
or shove him and rW1 away to make him chase her. Janie knew what she was up to-luring him away from the crowd. It kept up for two or three weeks with Nunkie getting bolder all the time. She'd hit Tea Cake playfully and the minute he so much as tapped her with his finger she'd fall against him or full on the ground and have to be picked up. She'd be almost helpless. It took a good deal of handJing to set her on her feet again. And another thing, Tea Cake didn't seem to be able to fend her off as promptly as Janie thought he ought to. She began to be snappish a little. A little seed of fear was growing into a tree. Maybe some dayTea Cake would weaken. Maybe he had already given secret encouragement and this was Nunkie's way of bragging about it. Other people began to notice too, and that put Janie more on a wonder.
One day they were working near where the beans ended and the sugar cane began. Janie had marched offa little from Tea Cake's side with another woman for a chat. When she glanced around Tea Cake was gone. Nunkie too. She knew because she looked.
"Where's Tea Caket" she asked Sop-de-Bottom.
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 137
He waved his hand towards the cane field and hurried away, Janie never thought at all. She just acted on feelings. She rushed into the cane and abour the fifth row down she found Tea Cake and Nunkie struggling. She was on them before either knew.
"Whut's de matter heaht" Janie asked in a cold rage. They sprang apart.
"Nothin'," Tea Cake told her, standing shame-faced.
"Well, whutyou ds! Ah don't b'Iieve it. You'se jus' sorter hypnotized, dat's all."
"Naw, it's real. Ah couldn't stand it if he wuz tuh quit me. Don't know whut Ah'd do. He kin take most any lil thing and make summertime out ofit when times is dull. Then we lives offa dat happiness he made till some mo' happiness come along."
"You'se different from me. Ah can't stand black niggers. Ah don't blame de white folks from hatin' 'em 'cause Ah can't stand
'em mahself 'Nother thing, Ah hates tuh see folks lak me and you mixed up wid 'em. Us oughra class off."
"Us can't do it. We'se uh mingled people and all of us got
black kinfolks as well as yaller kinfolks. How come you so against black?"
"And dey makes me tired. Always langhin'! Dey laughs too much and dey laughs too loud. Always singin' ol' nigger songs! Always cnttin' de monkey for white folks. If it wuzn't for so many black folks it wouldn't he no race problem. De white folks would take us in wid dem. De black ones is holdin' us hack."
"You reckon? 'course Ah ain't never thought about it too much. But Ah don't figger dey even gointuh want us for comp'ny. We'se too poor."
"'Tain't de poorness, it's de color and de features. vVho want any lil ole black baby Iayin' up in de baby buggy lookin' lak uh fly in buttermilk? Who wants to be mixed up wid uh rusty black man, and uh black woman goin' down de street in all dem loud colors, and whoopin' and hollerin' and laughin' over nothin'? Ah don't know. Don't bnng me no nigger doctor tub hang over mah sick-bed. Ah done had six chilhm-wuzn't lucky enough tuh raise but dat one-• and ain't never had uh nigger tub even feel mah pulse. White doc• tors always gits mah money. Ah don't go in no nigger store tuh buy
142 • Zora Neale Hurston
nothin' neither. Colored folks don't know nothin' 'bout no busi•
ness. Deliver me!"
Mrs. Turner was almost screaming in fanatical earnestness by now. Janie was dumb and bewildered before and she clucked sym• pathetically and wished she knew what to say. It was so evident that Mrs. Turner took black folk as a personal affront to herself.
"Look at me! Ah ain't got no flat nose and liver lips. Ah'm uh featured woman. Ah got white folks' features in mah face. Still and all Ah got tuh be lumped in wid all de rest. It ain't fair. Even if dey don't take us in wid de whites, dey oughta make us uh class tuh ourselves."
"It don't worry me atall, but Ah reckon Ah ain't got no real
head fur think.in'."
"You oughta meet mah brother. He's real smart. Got dead straight hair. Dey made him uh delegate tuh de Sunday School Convention and he read uh paper on Booker T. Washington and tore him tuh pieces!"
"Booker T.? He wuz a great big man, wusn't he?"
"'Sposed tuh be. All he ever done was cut de monkey for white folks. So dey pomped him up. But you know whut de ole folks say 'de higher de monkey climbs de mo' he show his behind' so dat's de way it wuz wid Booker T. Mah brother hit 'im every time dey give 'im chance tuh speak."
«Ah was raised on de notion dat he wuz uh great big man,"
was all that Janie knew to say.
"He didn't do nothin' but hold us back-talkin' 'bout work when de race ain't never done nothin' else. He wuz uh enemy tuh us, dat's whur. He wuz uh white folks' nigger."
According to all Janie had been taught this was sacrilege so she sat without speaking at all. But Mrs. Turner went on.
«Ah done sent fuh mah brother tuh come down and spend
uh while wid us. He's sorter outa work now. Ah wants yuh tuh
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 143
meet him mo' special. You and him would make up uh swell cou• ple if you wuzn'r already married. He's uh fine carpenter, when he kin git anything tuh do."
"Yeah, maybe so. But Ah is married now, so 'tain'r no use in
considerin'."
Mrs. Turner finally rose to go after being very firm about sev• eral other viewpoints of either herself, her son or her brother. She begged Janie to drop in on her anytime, but never once men• tioning Tea Cake. Finally she was gone and Janie hurried to her kitchen to put on supper and found Tea Cake sitting in there with his head between his hands.
"Tea Cake! Ah didn't know you wuz home."
"Ah know yuh didn't. Ah been heah uh long time listenin' to dat heifer run me down tuh de dawgs uh try tuh tole you off from me."
"So off me, Tea Cake."
"Naw, Ah won't neither. You comin' on outa de place." "\Vho gointuh make me come out?"
"Me, dat's who. Ah'm in heah, ain't Ah? If you don't want
ruh respect nice people lak Mrs. Turner, God knows you gointuh respect me! Come on outa hcah, Cood.emay."
"Turn him loose, Tea Cake!" Sterrett shouted. "Dar's mah
buddy. Us come in heah together and he ain't goin' nowhere until Ah go mahself."
"Well, both of yuh is goin '!" Tea Cake shouted and fastened
down on Coodemay. Dockery grabbed Sterrett and they wrassled all over the place. Some more joined in and dishes and tables began to crash.
Mrs. Turner saw with dismay that Tea Cake's taking them out was worse than letting them stay in. She ran out in the back somewhere and got her husband to put a stop to things. He came in, took a look and squinched down into a chair in an off corner and didn't open his mouth. So Mrs. Turner struggled into the mass and caught Tea Cake by the arm.
"Dar's all right, Tea Cake, Ah 'preciate yo' help, but leave
'cm alone."
"Naw suh, Mis' Turner, Ah'm gointuh show 'em dey can't come runnin' over nice people and loud-talk no place whilst Ah'm around. Dey goin' outa heah!"
By that rime everybody in and around the place was taking sides. Somehow or other Mrs. Turner fell down and nobody
152 • Zora Neale Hurston
knew she was down there under all the fighting, and broken dishes and crippled up tables and broken-off chair legs and win• dow panes and such things. It got so that the floor was knee-deep with something no matter where you put your foot down. But Tea Cake kept right on until Coodemaytold him, "Ah'm wrong. Ah'm wrong! Y'all tried ruh tell me right and Ah wouldn't Iissen. Ah ain't mad wid nobody, Just tuh show y'all Ah ain't mad, me and Sterrett gointuh buy everybody some thin' ruh drink. Ole man Vickers got some good coondick over round Pahokee. Come on everybody, Let's go git our knots charged." Everybody got in a good humor and left.
Mrs. Turner got up off the floor hollering for the police. Look at her place! How come nobody didn't call the police? Then she found out that one of her hand'> was all stepped on and her fingers were bleeding pretty pearr. Two or three people who were not there during the fracas poked their heeds in at the door to sympa• thize but that made Mrs. Turner madder. She told them where to go in a hurry. Then she saw her husband sitting over there in the corner with his long bony legs all crossed up smoking hi'> pipe.
"VVhat kinda man is JtJU, Turner? You see dese no count niggers
come in heah and break up mah place! How kin you set and see yo' wife all trompled on' You ain't no kinda man ata11. You seen datTea Cake shove me downl Yes you did! You ain't raised yo' hand tuh do nothin' about it."
Turner removed his pipe and answered: "Yeah, and you see
how Ah did swell up too, didn't yuh1 You tell Tea Cake he better be keerful Ah don't swell up again." At that Turner crossed his legs the other way and kept right on smoking his pipe.
Mrs. Turner hit at him the best she could with her hurt hand and then spoke her mind for half an hour.
"It's a good thing mah brother wuzn't round heah when it happened do he would uh kilt somebody. Mah son too. Dey got
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 153
some manhood about 'em. We'se goin' back tuh Miami where
folks is civilized."
Nobody told her right away that her son and brother were already on their way after pointed warnings outside the cafC. No time for fooling around. They were hurrying into Palm Beach. She'd find out about that later on.
Monday morning Coodemay and Sterrett stopped by and begged her pardon profusely and gave her five dollars apiece. Then Coodemay said, "Dey tell me Ah wuz drunk Sat'day night and clownln' down. Ah don't 'member uh thing 'bout it. But when Ah git ruh peepin' through mah likker, dey tell me Ah'm uh mess."
1•8
Since Tea Cake and Janie hadfriended with the Rahaman workers in the 'Glades, they, the "Saws," had been gradually drawn into the American crowd. They quit hiding out to hold their dances when they found that their American friends didn't laugh at them as they feared. Many of the Americans learned to jump and liked it as much as the "Saws." So they began to hold dances night after night in the quarters, usually behind Tea Cake's house. Often now, Tea Cake and Janie stayed up so late at the fire dances that Tea Cake would not let her go with him to the field. He wanted her to get her rest.
So she was home by herself one afternoon when she saw a band of Seminoles passing by. The men walking in front and the laden, stolid women following them like burros. She had seen Indians several times in the 'Glades, in twos and threes, but this was a large party. They were headed towards the Palm Beach road and kept moving steadily. About an hour later another party appeared and went the same way. Then another just before sun• down. This time she asked where they were all going and at last one of the men answered her.
"Going to high ground. Saw-grass bloom. Hurricane coming." Everybody was talking about it that night. But nobody was
Their Eyes Were Watching God 4P 155
worried, The fire dance kept up till nearly dawn, The next day, more Indians moved east, unhurried but steady. Still a blue sky and fair weather, Beans running fine and prices good, so the Indi• ans could be, must be, wrong, You couldn't have a hurricane when you're making seven and eight dollars a day picking beans, Indians are dumb anyhow, always were, Another night of Stew Beef making dynamic subtleties with his drum and living, sculp• tural, grotesques in the dance, Next day, no Indians passed at alt It was hot and sultry and Janie left the field and went home,
Morning came wirhout motion, The winds, to the tiniest,
lisping baby breath had left the earth, Even before the sun gave light, dead day was creeping from bush to bush watching man,
Some rabbits scurried through the quarters going east. Some possums slunk by and their route was definite, One or two at a time, then more, By the time the people left the fields the proces• sion was constant, Snakes, rattlesnakes began to cross the quarters, The men killed a few, but they could not be missed from the crawl• ing horde, People stayed indoors until daylight. Several times dur• ing the night Janie heard the snort of big animals like deer, Once the muted voice of a panther, Going cast and east, That night the palm and banana trees began that long distance talk with rain, Sev• eral people took fright and picked up and went in to Palm Beach anyway. A thousand buzzards held a Hying meet and then went above the clouds and stayed,
One of the Bahaman boys stopped by Tea Cake's house in a car and hollered. Tea Cake came out throw:in' laughter over his shoulder into the house.
"Hello Tea Cake!'
"Hello 'Lias, You leavin', Ah see,"
"Yeah man, You and Janie wanta go? Ah wouldn't give nobody else uh cbawnce at uh seat till Ah found out if you all had anyway tub go,"
156 • Zora Neale Hurston
"Thank yuh ever so much, Lias. But we 'bout decided tuh stay."
"De crow gahn up, man."
"Dat ain't nothin'. You ain't seen de bossman go up, is yuh? Well all right now. Man, de money's too good on the muck. It's liable tuh fair off by tuhmorrer. Ah wouldn't leave ifAh \VUZ you." "Mah uncle come for me. He say hurricane warning out in Palm Beach. Not so bad dere, but man, dis muck is too low and
dat big lake is liable tuh bust."
"Ahnaw, man. Some boys in dere nowtalkin' 'bout it. Some of 'em been in de 'Glades fuh years. 'Tain't nothln' but uh lil blow. You'll lose de whole day ruhmorrer tryin' ruh git back out heah."
"De Indians gahn east, man. It's dangerous."
"Dey don't always know. Indians don't know much uh nothin', tuh tell de truth. Else dey'd own dis country still. De white folks ain't gone nowhere. Dey oughta know if it's danger• ous. You better stay heah, man. Big jurnpin' dance tuhnight right heah, when it fair off."
Lias hesitated and started to climb out, but his uncle wouldn't
let him. "Dis rime tuhmorrer you gointuh wish you follow crow," he snorted and drove off. Lias waved back to them gaily.
"If Ah never see you no mo' on earth, Ah'll meet you in
Africa."
Others hurried east like the Indians and rabbits and snakes and coons. But the majority sat around laughing and waiting for the sun to get friendly again.
Several men collected at Tea Cake's house and sat around
stuffing courage into each other's ears. Janie baked a big pan of beans and something she called sweet biscuits and they all man• aged to be happy enough.
Most of the great flame-throwers were there and naturally,
Their Eyes Were Wlltching God • 157
handling Big John de Conquer and his works. How he had done everything big on earth, then went up tuh heben without dying atall. Went up there picking a guitar and got all de angels doing the ring-shout round and round de throne. Then everybody but God and Old Peter flew off on a flying race to Jericho and back and Iohn de Conquer won the race; went on down to hell, beat the old devil and passed out ice water to everybody down there. Some• body tried to say that it was a mouth organ harp that Iohn was playing, but the rest of them would not hear that. Don't care how good anybody could play a harp, God would rather to hear a gui• tar. That brought them back to Tea Cake. How come he couldn't hit that box a lick or two? Well, all right now, make us know it.
When it got good to everybody, Muck-Boy woke up and began to chant with the rhythm and everybody bore down on the last word of the line:
Yo' mama don't wear no Draws
Ah seen her when she took 'em Off
She soaked 'cm in akoHo!
She sold 'em tuh de Santy Claus He told her 'twas aginst de Law To wear dcm dirty Draws
Then Muck-Boy went crazy through the feet and danced himself and everybody else crazy. When he finished he sat back down on the floor and went to sleep again. Then they got to playing Florida flip and coon-can. Then it was dice. Not for money. This was a show-off game. Everybody posing his fancy shots. As always it broiled down to Tea Cake and Motor Boat. Tea Cake with his shy grin and Motor Boat with his face like a lit• tle black cherubim jnsr from a church tower doing amazing things with anybody's dice. The others forgot the work and the
158 • Zora Neale Hurston
weather watching them throw. It was art. A thousand dollars a throw in Madison Square Garden wouldn't have gotten any more breathless suspense. It would have just been more people holding in.
After a while somebody looked out and said, "It ain't girting
no fairer out dere. B'licve Ah'll git on over tuh mah shack." Motor Boat and Tea Cake were still playing so everybody left them at it.
Sometime that night the winds came back. Everything in the
world had a strong rattle, sharp and short like Stew Beef vibrat• ing the drum head near the edge with his fingers. By morning Gabriel was playing the deep tones in the center of the drum. So when Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered in the west-that cloud field of the sky-to arm them• selves with thunders and march forth against the world. Louder and higher and lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting, sinking, darking.
It woke up old Okecbobee and the monster began to roll in
his bed. Began to roll and complain like a peevish world on a grumble. The folks in the quarters and the people in the big houses further around the shore heard the big lake and won• dered. The people felt uncomfortable but safe because there were the seawalls to chain the senseless monster in his bed. The folks let the people do the thinking. If the castles thought themselves secure, the cabins needn't worry. Their decision was already made as always. Chink up your cracks, shiver in your wet beds and wait on the mercy of the Lord. The bossman might have the thing stopped before morning anyway. It is so easy to be hopeful in the day time when you can see the things you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands.
A big burst of thunder and lightning that trampled over the
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 159
roof of the house. So Tea Cake and Motor stopped playing. Motor looked up in his angel-looking way and said, "Big Massa draw him chair upstairs."
"Ah'm glad y'all stop dar crap-shootin' even if it wasn't for
money," Janie said. "Ole Massa is doin' His work now. Us oughta keep quiet."
They huddled closer and stared at the door. They just didn't
use another part of their bodies, and they didn't look at anything but the door. The time was past for asking the white folks what to look for through that door. Six eyes were questioning God.
Through the screaming wind they heard things crashing and things hurtling and dashing with unbelievable velocity. A baby rabbit, terror ridden, squirmed through a hole in the floor and squatted off there in the shadows against the wall, seeming to know that nobody wanted its flesh at such a time. And the lake got madder and madder with only its dikes between them and him.
In a little wind-lull, Tea Cake touched Janie and said, "Ah
reckon you wish now you had of stayed in yo' big house 'way from such as dis, don't yuh?"
"Naw."
"Naw?"
"Yeah, naw. People don't die till dey time come nohow, don't keer where you at. Ah'm wid mah husband in uh storm, dar's all."
"Thanky, Ma'am. But 'sposing you wuz tuh die, now. You
wouldn't git mad at me for draggin' yuh heah?"
"Naw. We been tuhgether round two years. If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all. Ah wuz fumblin' round and God opened de door."
He dropped to the floor and put his head in her lap. "Well then,
160 • Zora Neale Hurston
Janie, you meant whut you didn't say, 'cause Ah never knowed you wuz so satisfied wid me lak: dat. Ah kinda thought-"
The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
As soon as Tea Cake went out pushing wind in front of him, he saw that the wind and water had given life to lots of things that folks think of as dead and given death to so much that had been living things. Water everywhere. Stray fish swimming in the yard. Three inches more and the water would be in the house. Already in some. He decided to try to find a car to take them out of the
'Glades before worse things happened. He turned back to tell
Janie about it so she could be ready to go.
"Git our insurance papers ruhgerher, Janie. Ah'll tote mah box mahself and things lak dat."
"You got all de money out de dresser drawer, already?" "Naw, git it quick and cut up piece off de table-doth tub
wrap it up in. Us liable tuh git wet tuh our necks. Cut uh piece uh dat oilcloth quick fuh our papers. We got tuh go, ifit ain't too late. De dish can't bear it out no longer."
He snatched the oilcloth off the table and took out his knife. Janie held it straight while he slashed off a strip.
"But Tea Cake, it's too awful out dere. Maybe it's better tuh stay heah in de wet than it is tuh try tuh-"
He stunned the argument with half a word. "Fix," he said and fought his way outside. He had seen more than Janie had.
Janie took a big needle and ran up a longish sack. Found some newspaper and wrapped up the paper money and papers and thrust them in and whipped over the open end with her needle. Before
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 161
she could get it thoroughly hidden in the pocket of her overalls, Tea Cake burst in again.
"'Tain't no cars, Janie."
"Ah thought not! Whutwe gointuh do now?" "We got tuh walk."
"In all dis weather, Tea Cake? Ah don't b'Iieve Ah could
make it out de quarters."
"Oh yeah you kin. Me and you and Motor Boat kin all lock arms and hold one 'nother down. Eh, Motor?"
"He's sleep on de bed in yonder," Janie said. Tea Cake called
without moving.
"Motor Boat! You better git up from dere! Hell done broke loose in Georgy. Dis minute! How kin you sleep at uh time lak dis? Water knee deep in de yard."
They stepped out in water almost to their buttocks and man•
aged to turn east. Tea Cake had to throw his box away, and Janie saw how it hurt him. Dodging flying missiles, floating dangers, avoiding stepping in holes and warmed on the wind now at their backs until they gained comparatively dry land. They had to fight to keep from being pushed the wrong way and to hold together. They saw other people like themselves struggling along. A house down, here and there, frightened cattle. But above all the drive of the wind and the water. And the lake. Under its multiplied roar could be heard a mighty sound of grinding rock and timber and a wail. They looked back. Saw people trying to run in raging waters and screaming when they found they couldn't, A huge barrier of the makings of the dike to which the cabins had been added was rolling and tumbling forward. Ten feet higher and as far as they could see the muttering wall advanced before the braced-up waters like a road crusher on a cosmic scale. The mon• stropolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred miles an hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran
162 • Zora Neale Hurston
forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people in the houses along with other timbers. The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.
"De lake is comin'!" Tea Cake gasped.
"De lake!" In amazed horror from Motor Boat, "De lake!" "It's comin' behind us!" Janie shuddered. "Us can't fly." "Rut we still kin run," Tea Cake shouted and they ran. The
gushing water ran faster. The great body was held back, but rivers spouted through fissures in the rolling wall and broke like day. The three fugitives ran past another line of shanties that topped a slight rise and gained a little. They cried out as best they could, "De lake is comin'!" and barred doors flew open and others joined them in flight crying the same as they went. "De lake is comin'!" and the pursuing waters growled and shouted ahead, "Yes, Ah'm comin'!", and those who could fled on.
They made it to a tall house on a hump of ground and Janie said, "Less stop heah. Ah can't make it no further. Ah'm done give out."
"All of us is done give out," Tea Cake corrected. "We'sc
goin' inside out dis weather, kill or cure." He knocked with the handle of his knife, while they leaned their faces and shoulders against the wall. He knocked once more then he and Motor Boat went round to the back and forced a door. Nobody there.
"Dese people had mo' sense than Ah did," Tea Cake said as they dropped to the floor and lay there panting. "Us oughta went on wid 'Lias lak he ast me."
"You didn't know," Janie contended. "And when yuh don't
know, yuh just don't know. De storms might not ofcome sho nuff." They went to sleep promptly but Janie woke up first. She
heard the sound of rushing water and sat up. "Tea Cake! Motor Boat! De lake is comin'!"
Their Eyes Were Watching God 4IP 163
The lake was coming on. Slower and wider, but coming, It had trampled on most of its supporting wall and lowered its front by spreading. But it came muttering and grumbling onward like a tired mammoth just the same.
"Dis is uh high tall house. Maybe it won't reach heah at all,"
Janie counseled. "And if it do, maybe it won't reach tuh de upstairs part."
"Janie, Lake Okechobee is forty miles wide and sixty miles
long. Dat's uh whole heap uh water. If dis wind is shovin' dat whole lake disa way, dis house ain't no thin' ruh swaller. Us better go. Motor Boat!"
"Whut you want, man?"
"De lake is comin'!" "Aw, naw it 'tain't."
"Yes, it is so comin'! Listen! You kin hear it way off"
"It kin jus' come on. Ah'U wait right here."
"Aw, get up, Motor Boat! Less make it tuh de Palm Beach road. Dat's on uh fill. We'se pretty safe dere."
"Ah'm safe here, man, Go ahead if yuh wants to. Ah'm
sleepy."
"Whut you gointuh do if de lake reach heah?" "Go upstairs."
"S'posing it come up dcre!"
"Swim, man, Dar's all."
"well, uh, Good bye, Motor Boat. Everything is pretty bad, yuh know. Us might git missed of one 'nother. You sho is a grand friend fuh uh man tuh have."
"Good bye, Tea Cake. Y'all ougbra stay here and sleep, man. No use in goin' off and leavin' me lak dis."
"We don't wanta. Come on wid us. It might be night time when de water hem you up in heah. Dar's how come Ah won't stay. Come on, man."
164 • Zora Neale Hurston
"Tea Cake, Ah got tub have mah sleep. Definitely."
"Good bye, then, Motor. Ah wish you all de luck. Goin' over tuh Nassau fuh dat visit widja when all dis is over."
"Definitely, Tea Cake. Mah mama's house is yours."
Tea Cake and Janie were some distance from the house before they struck serious water. Then they had to swim a dis• tance, and Janie could not hold up more than a few strokes at a time, so Tea Cake bore her up till finally they hit a ridge that led on towards the fill. It seemed to him the wind was weakening a little so he kept looking for a place to rest and catch his breath. His wind was gone. Janie was tired and limping, but she had not had to do that hard swimming in the turbulent waters, so Tea Cake was much worse off. But they couldn't stop. Gaining the fill was something but it was no guarantee. The lake was com• ing. They had to reach the six-mile bridge. It was high and safe perhaps.
Everybody was walking the fill. Hurrying, dragging, falling, crying, calling out names hopefully and hopelessly. Wind and rain beating on old folks and beating on babies. Tea Cake stumbled once or twice in his weariness and Janie held him up. So they reached the bridge at Six Mile Bend and thought to rest.
But it was crowded. White people had preempted that point of elevation and there was no more room. They could climb up one of its high sides and down the other, that was all. Miles farther on, still no rest.
They passed a dead man in a sitting position on a hummock, entirely surrounded by wild animals and snakes. Common dan• ger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other.
Ahother man clung to a cypress tree on a tiny island. A tin roof of a building hung from the branches by electric wires and the wind swung it back and forth like a mighty ax. The man dared
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 165
not move a step to his right lest this crushing blade split him open. He dared not step left for a large rattlesnake was stretched full length with his head in the wind. There was a strip of water between the island and the fill, and the man dung to the tree and cried for help.
"De snake won't bite yuh," Tea Cake yelled to him. "He skecred tuh go intuh uh coil. Skeered he'll be blowed away. Step round d.at side and swim of-fl"
Soon after that Tea Cake felt he couldn't walk anymore. Not right away. So he stretched long side of the road to rest. Janie spread herself between him and the wind and he dosed his eyes and let the tiredness seep out of his limbs. On each side of the fill was a great expanse of water like lakes-water full of things living and dead. Things that didn't belong in water. As far as the eye could reach, water and wind playing upon it in fury. A large piece of tar-paper roofing sailed through the air and scudded along the fill until it hung against a tree. Janie saw it with joy. That was the very thing to cover Tea Cake with. She could lean against it and hold it down. The wind wasn't quite so bad as it was anyway The very thing. Poor Tea Cake!
She crept on hands and knees to the piece of roofing and caught hold ofit by either side. lmmediately the wind lifted both of them and she saw herself sailing off the fill to the right, out and out over the lashing water. She screamed terribly and released the roof• ing which sailed away as she plunged downward into the water.
"Tea Cake!" He heard her and sprang up. Janie was trying to swim but fighting water too hard. He saw a cow swimming slowly towards the fill in an oblique line. A massive built dog was sitting on her shoulders and shivering and growling. The cow was approaching Janie. A few strokes would bring her there.
"Make it tuh de cow and grab hold of her tail! Don't use yo' feet. Jus' yo' hands is enough. Dat's right, come on!"
166 • Zora Neale Hurston
Janie achieved the tail of the cow and lifted her head up along the cow's rump, as far as she could above water. The cow sunk a little with the added load and thrashed a moment in ter• ror. Thought she was being pulled down by a gator. Then she continued on. The dog stood up and growled like a lion, stiff• standing hackles, stiff muscles, teeth uncovered as he lashed up his fury for the charge. Tea Cake split the water like an otter, opening his knife as he dived. The dog raced down the back• bone of the cow to the attack and Janie screamed and slipped fur back on the tail of the cow, just out of reach of the dog's angry jaws. He wanted to plunge in after her but dreaded the water, somehow. Tea Cake rose out of the water at the cow's rump and seized the dog hy the neck. But he was a powerful dog and Tea Cake was over-tired. So he didn't kill the dog with one stroke as he had intended. But the dog couldn't free himself either. They fought and somehow he managed to bite Tea Cake high up on his cheek-bone once. Then Tea Cake finished him and sent him to the bottom to stay there. The cow relieved of a great weight was landing on the fill with Janie before Tea Cake stroked in and crawled weakly upon the fill again.
Janie began to fuss around his face where the dog had bitten him but he said it didn't amount to anything. "He'd uh raised hell though if he had uh grabbed me uh inch higher and bit me in mah eye. Yuh can't buy eyes in de store, yuh know." He flopped to the edge of the fill as if the storm wasn 't going on at all. "Lemme rest awhile, then us got ruh make it on intuh town somehow."
It was next day by the sun and the dock when they reached Palm Beach. It was years later by their bodies. Winters and win• ters of hardship and suffering. The wheel kept turning round and round. Hope, hopelessness and despair. But the storm blew itself out as they approached the city of refuge.
Their Eye� Were Watching God • 167
Havoc was there with her mouth wide open. Rack in the Everglades the wind had romped among lakes and trees. In the city it had raged among houses and men. Tea Cake and Janie stood on the edge of things and looked over the desolation.
"How kin Ah find uh doctor fuh yo' face in all dis mess?"
Janie wailed.
"Ain't got de damn doctor tuh study 'bout. Us needs uh place tuh rest."
A great deal of their money and perseverance and they found a place to sleep. It was just that. No place to live at all. Just sleep. Tea Cake looked all around and sat heavily on the side of the bed. "Well," he said humbly, "reckon you never 'specred tuh
come tuh dis when you took up wid me, didja?"
"Once upon uh time, Ah never 'spected nothin', Tea Cake, but bein' dead from the srandm' still and tryin' tuh laugh. But you come 'long and made somethin' outa me. SoAh'm thankful fuh anything we come through together."
"Thanky, Ma'am."
"You was twice noble ruh save me from dat dawg. Tea Cake, Ah don't speck you seen his eyes lak Ah did. He didn't aim tuh jus' bite me, Tea Cake. He aimed tuh kill me stone dead. Ah'm never tuh fuhgit dern eyes. He wuzn't nothin' aU over but pure hate. Wonder where he come from?"
"Yeah, Ah did see 'im too. It wuz frighrenm'. Ah didn't mean tuh take his hate neither. He had tuh die uh me one. Mah switch blade said it wuz him."
"Po' me, he'd tore me tuh pieces, if it wuzn't fuh you,
honey."
"You don't have tuh say, if it wuzn 't fuh me, baby, cause
Ah'm heah, and then Ah wanr yuh tuh know it's uh man heah."
1•9
And then again Him·with-the-square-toes had gone back to his house. He stood once more and again in his high flat house with• out sides to it and without a roof with his soulless sword standing upright in his hand. His pale white horse had galloped over waters, and thundered over land. The time of dying was over. It was time to bury the dead.
"Janie, us been in dis dirty, slouchy place two days now, and dat's too much. Us got tuh git oura dis house and outa dis man's town. Ah never did lak round heah."
"'Where we goin', Tea Cake? Dat we don't know."
"Maybe, we could go back up de state, if yuh want ruh go." "Ah didn't say dar, but if "
"Sho is. But de worst thing is he's liable tuh suffer somethin' awful befo' he goes."
"Doctor, Ah loves him fit ruh kill. Tell me anything tuh do
and Ah'll do it."
"'Rout de only thing you can do, Janie, is to put him in the County Hospital where they can tie him down and look after him."
"But he don't like no hospiral at all. He'd th.ink:Ah wuz tired uh doin' fuh 'im, when God knows Ah ain't. J\h can't stand de idea us tyin' Tea Cake lak he wuz uh mad dawg."
"It almost amounts to dat, Janie. He's got almost no chance
to pull through and he's liable to bite somebody else, specially you, and then you'll be in the same fix he's in. It's mighty bad." "Can't nothin' be done fuh his case, doctah? Us got plenty money in de bank in Orlandah, doctah. See can't yuh do some• thin' special tuh save him. Anything it cost, doctah, Ah don't
keer, but please, docrah."
"Do what I can. Ah 'II phone into Palm Beach right away for the serum which he should have had three weeks ago. I 'JI do all I can to save him, Janie. But it looks too late. People in
178 • Zora Neale Hurston
his condition can't swallow water, you know, and in other ways it's terrible."
Janie fooled around outside awhile to try and think it wasn't so. If she didn't see the sickness in his face she could imagine it wasn't really happening. Well, she thought, that big old dawg with the hatred in his eyes had killed her after all. She wished she had slipped off that cow-tail and drowned then and there and been done. But to kill her through Tea Cake was too much to bear. Tea Cake, the son of Evening Sun, had to die for loving her. She looked hard at the sky for a long time. Somewhere up there beyond blue ether's bosom sat He. Was He noticing what was going on around here? He must be because He knew everything. Did He mean to do this thing to Tea Cake and her! It wasn't any• thing she could fight. She could onJy ache and wait. Maybe it was some big tease and when He saw it had gone far enough He'd give her a sign. She looked hard for something up there to move for a sign. A star in the daytime, maybe, or the sun to shout, or even a mutter of thunder. Her arms went up in a desperate sup• plication for a minute. It wasn't exactly pleading, it was asking questions. The sky stayed hard looking and quiet so she went inside the house. God would do less than He had in His heart.
Tea Cake was lying with his eyes dosed and Janie hoped he was asleep. He wasn't. A great fear had took hold of him. What was this thing that set his brains afire and grabbed at his throat with iron fingers? Where did ir come from and why did it hang around him! He hoped it would stop before Janie noticed any• thing. He wanted to try to drink water again but he didn't want her to see him fail. As soon as she got out of the kitchen he meant to go to the bucket and drink right quick before anything had time to stop him. No need to worry Janie, until he couldn't help it. He heard her deaning out the stove and saw her go out back to empty the ashes. He leaped at the bucket at once. But this time
Their Eyes Were Watching God • 179
the sight of the water was enough. He was on the kitchen floor in great agony when she returned. She petted him, soothed him, and got him back to bed. She made up her mind to go see about that medicine from Palm Beach. Maybe she could find somebody to drive over there for it.
"Feel better now, Tea Cake, baby child"
"Uh huh, uh little."
''Well, b'lieve Ah'll rake up de front yard. De mens is got cane chewin's and peanut hulls all over de place. Don't want de doctah ruh come back heah and find it still de same."
"Don't take too long, Janie. Don't lak tuh be by mahself whenAh'm sick."
She ran down the road just as fast as she could. Halfway to
town she met Sop-de-Bortom and Dockery coming towards her. "Hello, Janie, how's Tea Cake?"
"Pretty bad off. Ah'm goinruh sec 'bout medicine fuh 'im
right now."
"Doctor told somebody he wuz sick so us come tuh see. Thought somerhin' he never come tuh work."
"Y'all set wid 'im till Ah git back. He need de company right
long in heah."
She fanned on down the road to town and found Dr. Sim• mons. Yes, he had had an answer. 'They didn't have any serum but they had wired Miami to send it. She needn't worry. It would be there early the next morning if not before. People didn't fool around in a case like that. No, it wouldn't do for her to hire no car to go after it. Just go home and wait. That was all. When she reached home the visitors rose to go.
When they were alone Tea Cake wanted to put his head in
Janie's lap and tell her how he felt and let her mama him in her sweet way. But something Sop had told him made his tongue lie cold and heavy like a dead lizard between his jaws. Mrs. Turner's
180 • Zora Neale Hurston
brother was back on the muck and now he had this mysterious sickness. People didn't just take sick like this for nothing.
"Janie, whut is Afterword
hoodoo rituals accrere during the reading." As author, she func• tions as "a midwife participating in the birth of a body of folk• lore, ... the first wondering contacts with natural law." The myths she describes so accurately are in facr "alternative modes for perceiving reality," and never just condescending depictions of the quaint. Hurston sees "the Dozens," for example, that age-old black ritual of graceful insult, as, among other things, a verbal defense of the sanctity of the family, conjured through ingenious plays on words. Though attacked by Wright and vir• tually ignored by his literary heirs, Hurston's ideas about lan• guage and craft undergird many of the most successful contribu• tions to Afro-American literature that followed.
N.
We can understand Hurston's complex and contradictory legacy more fulJy if we examine Dust Tracks on a Road, her own con• ttoversial account of her life. Hurston did make significant parts of herself up, like a masquerader putting on a disguise for the ball, like a character in her fictions. In this way, Hurston wrote herself, and sought in her works to rewrite the "self" of "the race," in its several private and public guises, largely for ideolog• ical reasons. That which she chooses to reveal is the life of her imagination, as it sought to mold and interpret her environ• ment. That which she silences or deletes, similarly, is all that her readership would draw upon to delimit or pigeonhole her life as a synecdoche of"the race problem," an exceptional part stand• ing for the debased whole.
Hurston's achievement in Dust Tracks is twofold. First, she
gives us a writer's life, rather than an account, as she says, of "the Negro problem." So many events in this text are figured in terms of Hurston 's growing awareness and mastery of books
Afterword • 203
and language, language and linguistic rituals as spoken and writ• ten both by masters of the Western tradition and by ordinary members of the black community. These two "speech commu• nities," as it were, are Hurston's great sources of inspiration not only in her novels but also in her autobiography.
The representation of her sources of language seems to be her principal concern, as she constantly shifts back and forth between her "literate" narrator's voice and a highly idiomatic black voice found in wonderful passages of free indirect discourse. Hurston moves in and out of these distinct voices effortlessly, seamlessly, just as she docs in 1heir Eyest.o chart Janie's coming to conscious• ness. It is this usage of a divided voice, a double voice unrecon• ciled, that strikes me as her great achievement, a verbal analogue of her double experiences as a woman in a male-dominated world and as a black person in a nonblack world, a woman writer's revi• sion ofW. E. B. Du Bois's metaphor of "double-consciousness" for the hyphenated African-American.
Her language, variegated by the twin voices that intertwine throughout the text, retains the power to unsettle.
There Is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping offthe heart like leaves in a dry season and rot· ring around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air ofunderground caves. The soul lives in a sickly air. People can be slave-ships in shoes.
Elsewhere she analyzes black "idioms" used by a culture "raised on simile and invective. They know how to call names," she concludes, then lists some, such as 'gator-mouthed, box• ankled, puzzle-gutted, shovel-footed: "Eyes looking like skinr• ginny nuts, and mouth looking like a dishpan full of broke-up crockery!"
204 ,&, Afterword
Immediately following the passage about her mother's death, she writes:
The Master-Maker i.n His making had made Old Death. Made him with big, soft feet and square toes. Made him with a face that reflects the face of all things, but neither changes itself, nor is mirrored anywhere. Made the body of death out of infi• nite hunger. Made a weapon of his hand to satisfy his needs. This was the morning of the day of the beginning of things.
Language, in these passages, is not merely "adornment," as Hurston described a key black linguistic practice; rather, manner and meaning are perfectly in tune: she says the thing in the most meaningful manner. Nor is she being "cute," or pandering to a condescending white readership. She is "naming" emotions, as she says, in a language both deeply personal and culturally specific.
The second reason that Dust Tracks succeeds as literature arises from the first: Hurston 's unresolved tension between her double voices signifies her full understanding of modernism. Hurston uses the two voices in her text to celebrate the psycho• logical fragmentation both of modernity and of the black Ameri• can. As Barbara Johnson has written, hers is a rhetoric of division, rather than a fiction of psychological or cultural unity. Zora Neale Hurston, the "real" Zora Neale Hurston that we long to locate in this text, dwells in the silence that separates these two voices: she is both, and neither; bilingual, and mute. This strat• egy helps to explain her attraction to so many contemporary crit• ics and writers, who can turn to her works again and again only to be startled at her remarkable artistry.
But the life that Hurston could write was not the life she could live. In fact, Hurston's life, so much more readily than does the stan• dard sociological rendering, reveals how economic limits determine
Afterword • 205
our choices even more than does violence or love. Put simply, Hurston wrote well when she was comfortable, wrote poorly when she was not. Financial problems-book sales, grants and fellowships too few and too paltry, ignorant editors and a smothering patron• produced the sort of dependence that affects, if not determines, her style, a relation she explored somewhat ironically in "What White Publishers Won't Print." We cannot oversimplify the relation between Hurston's art and her life; nor can we reduce the complex• ity ofher postwar politics, which, rooted in her distaste for the patho logical image of blacks, were markedly conservative and Republican.
Nor can we sentimentalize her disastrous final decade, when she found herself working as a maid on the very day the Saturday Evening Post published her short story "Conscience of the Court" and often found herself without money, surviving after 1957 on unemployment benefits, substitute teaching, and welfare checks.
=In her last days," Hemenway concludes dispassionately, "Zora lived a difficult life-alone, proud, ill, obsessed with a book she could not finish."
The excavation of her buried life helped a new generation read
Hurston again. But ultimately we must find Hurston's legacy in her art, where she "ploughed up some literacy and laid by some alphabets." Her importance rests with the legacy of fiction and lore she constructed so cannily. As Hurston herself noted, "Roll your eyes in ecstasy and ape his every move, but until we have placed something upon his street corner that is our own, we are right back where we were when they filed our iron collar off" If, as a friend eulogized, "She didn't come to you empty," then she does not leave black literature empty. If her earlier obscurity and neglect today seem inconceivable, perhaps now, as she wrote of Moses, she has "crossed over."
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.
Selected Bibliography
WORKS BY ZORA NEALE HURSTON
]onah>s Gourd Vine. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1934.
MuksandMen. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1935.
Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott,
1937.
Tell My Horse. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1938.
Moses, Man ofthe Mountain. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1939. Dust Tracks on a Road. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1942. Seraph on the Suwanee. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948.
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing ... &Then.Again "When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, N.Y.: The Feminist Press, 1979.
The Sanctijied Church. Edited by Toni. Cade Bambara. Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1981.
Spunk: !be Selected Short Stories ofZora Neale Hurston. Berkeley:
Turtle Island, 1985.
208 4' Selected Bibliography
WORKS ABOUT ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Baker, Houston A., Jr. Blues, Ideokgy, and Afro-American Litera• ture: A Vernacular Theory, pp. 15--63. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Chelsea
House, 1986.
-r-, ed. Zora Neale Hursttm's «'fbeir Eyes Were Watching God. :r,
New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Byrd, James W. "Zora Neale Hurston: A Novel Folklorist." Ten•
nessee Folklore Society Bulletin 21 (]955): 37--41.
Cooke, Michael G. "Solitude: The Beginnings of Self-Realization in Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison." In Michael G. Cooke, Afro-American Literature in the Twen• tieth Century, pp. 71-110. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1984.
Dance, Daryl C. "Zora Neale Hurston." In American Women Writers: BibHographical &says, edited by Maurice Duke) et al. wesrporr, Conn.. Greenwood Press) 1983.
Gates, Henry Louis) Jr. "The Speakerly Text." In Henry Louis Gates) Jr., The Signifying Monkey, pp. 170--217. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Giles, James R. "The Significance of Time in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God:" Negro American Literature Forum6 (Summer 1972): 52-53, 60.
Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography.
Chicago: University oflllinois Press, 1977.
Holloway, Karla. The Character of the Word: The Texts of Zora
Neale Hurston. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987. Holt, Elvin. "Zora Neale Hurston." In Fifty Southern Writers
After 1900, edited by Joseph M. Plura and Robert Bain, pp.
259-69. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987.
Sdected Bibliography • 209
Howard, Lillie Pearl. Zora Neale Hurston. Boston: Twaync, 1980.
-. "Zora Neale Hurston." In Dictionary of Literary Biography,
vol. 51, edited by Trudier Harris, pp. 133-45. Detroit: Gale,
1987.
Jackson, Blyden. "Some Negroes in the Land of Goshen." Ten·
nessee Folklore Society Bullttin 19 (4) (December 1953):
103-7.
Johnson, Barbara. "Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes." In Black Literature and Literary Theory, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pp. 205-21. New York: Methuen,
1984.
"Thresholds of Difference: Strucrures of Address in Zora Neale Hurston." In «Race,» Writing and Difference, edited by Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1986.
Jordan, June. "On Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston."
Black World 2 3 ( 10) (August 1974 Jc 4-8.
Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. " "Iuh de Horizon and Back': The Female Quest in Thdr Eyes.» Black American Literature Forum 17 (3) (Fall 1983), 109-15.
lionnet, Francoise. "Autoethnography: The Anarchic Style of
Dust Tracks on a Road." In Francoise Lionnet, Autobiograph�
ical Vtni:es: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture, pp. 97-130. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1989.
Lupton, Mary Jane. "Zora Neale Hurston and the Survival of the
Female." Southern LiteraryJournal 15 (Fall 1982): 45-54.
Meese, Elizabeth. "Oralityand Textualityin Zora Neale Hurston's
1heir Eyes." In Elizabeth Meese, Crossing the Double Cross: The Practice of Feminist Criticism, pp. 39-55. Chapel Hill: Uni• versity of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Newson, Adele S. Zera Neale Hurston: A Reference Guide.
Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.
210 4' Selected Bibliography
Rayson, Ann. "Dust Tracks on a Road: Zora Neale Hurston and the Form of Black Autobiography." Negro American Luera• ture Forum 7 (Summer 1973): 42-44.
Sheffey, Ruthe T., ed. A Rainbow Round Her Shoulder: The Zora Neale Hurston Symposium Papers. Baltimore: Morgan State University Press, 1982.
Smith, Barbara. "Sexual Politics and the Fiction of Zora Neale
Hurston." Radical Teachers (May 1978): 26-30.
Stcpto, Robert B. From Behi'nd the Veil. Urbana: University of Illi•
nois Press, 1979.
Walker, Alice. "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston." Ms., March
1975,pp. 74-79,85-89.
Wall, Cheryl A. "Zora Neale Hurston: Changing Her Own Words." In American Noveli'sts R.tvi'sited: Ersays in Femi'ni'st Criticism, edited by Fritz Fleischmann, pp. 370-93. Boston: G. K Hall, 1982.
Washington, Mary Helen. "Zora Neale Hurston: A Woman Half
in Shadow." Introduction to I Love Myself When I Am Laugh�
ing, edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist
Press, 1979.
-. " 'I Love the Way Janie Crawford Left Her Husbands': Zora Neale Hurston's Emergent Female Hero." In Mary Helen Washington, Invented Lives: Narrarives of Black Women,
1860-1960. New York: Anchor Press, 1987.
Willis, Miriam. "Folklore and the Creative Artist: Lydia Cabrera and Zora Neale Hurston." CLA Journal 27 (September
1983), 81-90.
Wolff, Maria Tai. "Listening and Living: Reading and Experience
in Their Ey,s." BALFl6 (!) (Spring 1982), 29-33.
Chronology
January 7, 1891 Born in Eatonville, Florida, the fifth of eight children, to John Hurston, a carpenter and Baptist preacher, and Lucy Potts Hurston,
a former schoolteacher.
September 1917- Attends Morgan Academy in Baltimore,
June 1918 completing the high school requirements.
Summer 1918 Works as a waitress in a nightclub and a mani• curist in a black-owned barbershop that serves only whites.
1918-19 Attend'> Howard Prep School, Washington,
D.C.
1919-24 Attends Howard University; receives an asso•
ciate degree in 1920.
1921 Publishes her first story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," in the Stylus, the campus literary society's magazine.
212 • Chronology
December 1924 Publishes "Drenched in Light," a short story, in Opportunity.
1925 Submits a story, "Spunk," and a play, Color Struck, to Opportunity's literary contest. Both win second-place awards; publishes "Spunk" in the June number.
1925-27 Attends Barnard College, studying anthropol•
ogy with Franz Boas.
1926 Begins field work for Boas in Harlem. January 1926 Publishes "John Redding Goes to Sea"
in Opportunity.
Summer 1926 Organizes Fire!with Langston Hughes
and Wallace Thurman; they publish only one issue, in November 1926. The issue includes Hurston's "Sweat."
August 1926 Publishes "Muttsy" in Opportunity.
September 1926 Publishes "Possum or Pig" in the Forum.
September- Publishes "The Eatonville Anthology" in
November 1926 the Messenger.
1927 Publishes The Fim One, a play, in Charles S.
Johnson's Ebony and Topaz.
February 1927 Goes to Florida to collect folklore.
Chronology • 213
May 19, 1927 Marries Herbert Sheen.
September 1927 First visits Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, seeking patronage.
October 1927 Publishes an account of the black settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, in the Journal of Negro History; also in this issue: "Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaver."
December 1927 Signs a contract with Mason, enabling her to return to the South to collect folklore.
1928 Satirized as "Sweetie Mae Carr" in Wallace Thurman's novel about the Harlem Renais• sance Infants of the Spring; receives
a bachelor of arts degree from Barnard. January 1928 Relations with Sheen break off.
May 1928 Publishes "How It Feel; to Be Colored Me"
in the World Tomorrow.
1930-32 Organizes the field notes that become
Mules and Men.
May-Iunc 1930 Works on the play Mule Bone with
Langston Hughes.
1931 Publishes "Hoodoo in America" in the
Journal ofAmerican Folklore.
214 • Chronology
February 193] Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of Mule Bone.
July 7, 1931 Divorces Sheen.
September 1931 Writes for a theatrical revue called Fast and
Furious.
January 1932 Writes and stages a theatrical revue called
The Great Day1 first performed on January 10 on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre; works with the creative literature department of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, to produce a concert program of Negro music.
1933 Writes "The Fiery Chariot."
January 1933 Stages From Sun to Sun (a version of Great
Day) at Rollins College.
August 1933 Publishes "The Gilded Six-Bits" in Story.
1934 Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard's anthol•
ogy, Negro.
January 1934 Goes to Bethune-Cookman College to estab• lish a school of dramatic arts "based on pure Negro expression."
May 1934 Publishes Jonah)s Gourd Vine1 originally titled Big Nigger; it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Chronology • 215
September 1934 Publishes "The Fire and the Cloud" in the
Challenge.
November 1934 Singing Steel ( a version of Greet Day) per•
formed in Chicago.
January 1935 Makes an abortive attempt to study for a Ph.Din anthropology at Columbia University on a fellowship from the Rosenwald Founda• tion. In fact, she seldom attends classes.
August 1935 Joins the WPA Federal Theatre Project as a
"dramatic coach."
October 1935 Mules and Men published.
March 1936 Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study
West Indian Obeah practices.
April- In Jamaica. September 1936
September- In Haiti; writes Their Eyes Were Watching
March 1937 God in seven weeks.
May 1937 Returns to Haiti on a renewed Guggenheim. September 1937 Returns to the United States; Their Eyes Were
Watching God published, September 18.
February- Writes Tell My Horse; it is published the
March 1938 same year.
216 • Chronology
April 1938 Joins the Federal Writers Project in Florida to work on The Florida Negro.
1939 Publishes "Now Take Noses" in Cordially
Yours.
Iune 1939 Receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Morgan State College.
June 27, 1939 Marries Albert Price III in Florida.
Summer 1939 Hired as a drama instructor by North Car• olina College for Negroes at Durham; meets Paul Green, professor of drama, at the Uni• versity of North Carolina.
November 1939 Mom, Man of the Mountain published. February 1940 Files for divorce from Price, though the two
are reconciled briefly.
Summer 1940 Makes a folklore-collecting trip to South Car•
olina.
Spring-July 1941 Writes Dust Tracks on a Road.
July 1941 Publishes "Cock Robin, Beale Street" in the
Southern Literary Musenger.
October 1941- Works as a story consultanr at Paramount
January 1942 Pictures.
Chronology • 217
July 1942 Publishes "Story in Harlem Slang" in the
American Mercury.
September 5, Publishes a profile of Lawrence Silas in the
1942 Saturday Evening Post.
November 1942 Dust Tracks on a Road published.
February 1943 Awarded the Anisfield-WolfBook Award in Race Relations for Dust Tracks; on the cover of the Saturday Review.
March 1943 Receives Howard University's Distinguished
Alunml Award.
May 1943 Publishes "The 'Pet Negro' Syndrome" in
the American Mercury.
November 1943 Divorce from Price granted.
June 1944 Publishes "My Most Humiliating Jim Crow
Experience" in the Negro Digest.
1945 Writes Mrs. Doctor; it is rejected by Lippincott. March 1945 Publishes "The Rise of the Begging Joints" in
the American Mercury.
December 1945 Publishes "Crazy for This Democracy" in the
Negro Digest.
218 • Chronology
1947 Publishes a review of Robert Tallant's Voodoo in New Orkansin the Journal ofAmerican Folklare.
May 1947 Goes to British Honduras to research black communities in Central America; writes Ser• aph on the Suwanee; stays in Honduras until March 1948.
September 1948 Falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy and arrested; case finally dismissed in March 1949.
October 1948 Seraph on the Suwanee published.
March 1950 Publishes "Conscience of the Court" in the Saturday Evening Post, while working as a maid in Rivo Island, Florida.
April 1950 Publishes "What White Publishers Won't
Print" in the Saturday Evening Post.
November 1950 Publishes "I Saw Negro Votes Peddled" in
the American Legion magazine. Winter 1950-51 Moves to Belle Glade, Florida.
June 1951 Publishes "Why the Negro Won't Ruy Com•
munism" in the American Legion magazine.
December 8, Publishes "A Negro Voter Sizes Up Taft"
1951 in the Saturday Evening Post.
Chronology • 219
1952 Hired by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the
Ruby McCollum case.
May 1956 Receives an award for "education and human relations" at Bethune-Cookman College.
June 1956 Works as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida; fired in 1957.
1957-59 Writes a column on "Hoodoo and Black
Magic" for the Fort Pierce Chronicle.
1958 Works as a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park
Academy, Fort Pierce. Early 1959 Suffers a stroke.
October 1959 Forced to enter the St. Lucie County Welfare
Home.
January 28, 1960 Dies in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home of"hypertensive heart disease"; buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, Fort Pierce.
August 1973 Alice Walker discovers and marks Hurston's grave.
March 1975 Walker publishes "In Search of Zora Neale
Hurston," in Ms., launching a Hurston revival.